#you only exist to be watched and when you are being watched

[waterloverextreme]

I called these "taken by a Strange Mood"; Like in the videogame Dwarf Fortress. Sometimes you either find yourself doing or making something with extreme compulsion. Or fist-fighting the trees because it won't give you fur.

Normally I stay away from people cause I know I will try to pick fights with them.... So I go to the Kitchen; which I needed to ban myself from!!

Things I have done during a Strange Mood [Kitchen Edition]

Decided to make my sister a Hot Chocolate. Forgot what a hot chocolate was. Poured a mug up to the brim with hot water. Stared at it. Took the container of hot chocolate mix and DUMPED IT onto the mug. Was confused why it was all over the counter.

Stared at the metal coil stovetop as it was bright red after cooking. A few seconds later it was no longer burning red as I turned the stovetop off. Thought, "It's still hot, but HOW hot is it?". Proceeded to touch the heating element. Went "hmmm it's hot enough for me to be in a lot of pain", like a dumbass. As I've never touched a hot stove before what the frick was I trying to compare it to???

Made the most digusting meal of soggy wet white bread, and visibly moldy cream cheese. Because, "someone needs to eat this before we need to throw it out".

Stared at the ceiling until it looked like flesh moving

Took 12 cups and filled them with water. Placed them around my bedroom (different floor of the house) to feel what it was like to be Jack and Jill fetching water if they didn't fall down.

Wanted to re-experience being 5 and rolling down the stairs without getting a single bruise... I am too tall now and it was awkward and painful.

Spent hours imagining gravity shifted and I got stuck on the ceiling of the kitchen. Which still gets my heart pumping just thinking about it. Harrowing! DO NOT ATTEMPT

Laid down on the floor because that would hopefully stop myself from going outside. Got distracted by trying to retrieve the dusty cat toy under the fridge. The cats watched me.

Tell myself over and over to not put utensils in the microwave. Just cause I forgot a spoon in there once and didn't explode doesn't mean anything!

Spin. Like a lot. Especially right under the ceiling light which if I did the tiniest hop would impail my head.

These aren't the most interesting as I said. I have banned myself from the Kitchen. I only allow myself premade snacks like crackers or canned fruit. As like- I get real dangerous and dumb.

If I feel a strange mood coming whilst with people? My main way to deflect it is to unironically challenge people to "1v1 me on club penguin". That doesn't exist anymore so most people take it as a joke. Usually it defuses into me coming up with more wild and improbable dueling oppurtunities. At least until I can think of an excuse to seperate myself or direct the energy elsewhere.

Usually I try to put myself in the least dangerous location I can. Like I know the signs for myself, so I often put as much distance between myself, outside, and places with oopsie daisy objects as possible.

Shout out to the time I was locked out of the house so I decided to ought to live behind the shed. No one would find me there. I can hop the fence to come and go. Much like a wasp. As that's better for society. Unironically I was planning to restart my life and become a runaway. Since y'know wasps and bees are less likely to sting you if you are familiar to them. I am lucky the key to the shed was inside. I didn't get to interact with the gas canisters or live wasp nest.

Everyone is one Strange Mood from discovering the wonders of life or doing something they'd really regret.

As like- when I am in this mood I would unironically agree to taking a bus for hours to fist fight someone... Me, a person who handles pressure, competition, or conflict with the grace of a wrung out wet paperbag. In a Strange Mood that's all gone baby! I WOULD wrestle a crocodile to release it in a food court; Where it belongs!! Like God and Zoo Tycoon intended!!

I am so lucky I wasn't born in Florida

99% of "mysterious disappearances" esp of people in their 20s who start acting weird for 48 hours and then vanish are not mysterious, thats just when a lot of reality-obliterating mental illness tends to kick in and it's pretty easy to get a short circuit in your brain that makes you go family guy death pose in joshua tree national park. it's not any less tragic, it's just a documented phenomenon and not particularly predictable. its a big reason the medical advice is for people with a family history of schizophrenia to completely avoid weed and psychedelics. "people just go crazy sometimes" is a principle of human health that used to be a lot more accepted prior to the american midcentury and to a certain extent thats a healthier way to conceptualize and prepare for the risk, as opposed to the modern assertion that anyone acting weird is dangerous and broken forever.

[crunchystarz]

Hi, I just found your work and I literally love all of it!!! If it’s not too much of an issue (you can delete this if you want), can I please request self aware Malleus who reader badgers with questions about fae folklore upon him coming to their world?

Like, there’s so many interesting things about fae in mythology! Is giving a fae your name really bad? Does iron hurt him? Does he get offerings? Ahhhh, my head is spinning just thinking about it!

"COURTING?!?"

Self-aware!Malleus Draconia x GN!reader

Summary: while relaxing you ask Malleus about courting rituals among fae

Cw- fluff, gn!reader

Word count:1433

A/n: this is not proof read I fear🙂‍↕️; hopefully I did this ask right if not you have every right to call me a witch in front of the towns folk (also thank you so much for your sweet words o⁠(⁠(⁠*⁠^⁠▽⁠^⁠*⁠)⁠)⁠o I try my best)

Mallues had always been interested in human behavior and culture, he just found them so fascinating. The complexities, the intricacies, the way humans could be so unpredictable. When he became aware of your existence he was no different wanting to know every little thing about you. To him you were like a puzzle he desperately wanted to solve.

What he didn't expect was the way you were as curious about him as much as he was with you. Since he started living with you, you'd always ask him about himself and fae. Was it true you couldn't break a promise? Was the never say thank you thing just a myth?

It was just so interesting to you. Did the fae from his world line up with the folklore from your world? You were just so curious. At first you were scared to approach him about it. Too scared it might be too personal and you might offend him. However he asks about humans all the time wouldn't it be fair if you did the same?

Malleus quietly watched you as you sprawled out across your mattress. Green eyes just taking in your features as your own skimmed across the novel you had taken a liking to as of recently.

Suddenly you rolled over on your back. The raven hair watched, confused on what you were up to, before you fully sat up and stared up at him. He searched your face for any signs of discomfort or you being upset.

“Is everything alright [Name]?” The prince asked. You nodded, a small smile tugging at your lips and you lifted up your book. Malleus tilted his head confused.

“I just have a question, “ you started, closing the book. You'd constantly ask the horned fae questions so it wasn't a surprise when you sprung one out of nowhere. He let out a hum.

“ What is it, child of man?” He responded, voice soft. You looked a little flushed before clearing your throat. You met his gaze, his eyes watching you waiting for your question.

“Well it's that I'm very curious, how do fae court each other? Is it like In my books or is it completely different? “ You asked, sitting on your knees now. Malleus's eyes widened a bit and a flood of pink blush spread across his cheeks.

“Where is this coming from…” the raven hair spoke, his green eyes darting away from your face. Seeing his flustered expression made you smile a bit. You shook your head.

“Just curious is all” You said looking up at Malleus with an innocence he couldn't place. Just…curious. He cleared his throat trying to find the right words.

Finally, he let out a soft sigh and folded his hands in his lap.

“Well,” he began, his voice a bit quieter than usual, “courting among the fae is... a deeply significant and intricate process. It’s not something you enter into lightly, like any relationship it’s to be treated in a…delict matter.” He glanced at you briefly, his green eyes meeting yours before looking away again.

“Fae’s live a long time, yes;however we typically choose a partner only once so courting is very something that we do with caution “ He added. You smiled and nodded your head for the horned fae to continue.

“Courting often begins with gestures—small but meaningful acts that convey one’s intentions. Gift giving as you humans call it, usually a flower from a private garden or a trinket with a significant value would be given” Malleus spoke, placing a finger on his chin.

“Each gift is a declaration ,like a message that carries unspoken words if you will. Usually they're enchanted with magic as well” He started again

Your eyes sparkled with fascination as you leaned forward slightly. You were utterly engrossed. You'd always been a fan of the mythical world; You were always so excited whenever Malleus would answer your questions.

“woah…” you murmured. “Do both parties exchange these gifts?” you asked tilted your head. The prince’s eyes landed on you and he smiled softly. He let out a quiet hum.

“Once recognized and accepted, yes it is very common for the person to give back in signs they want to move forward, “ Malleus replied. You nodded, mouth slightly agape.

You recall something about fae being known to be possessive with their things, did that apply to partners as well?

“So Mal, I heard fae can be very territorial. Does that also apply to their partners—like um do you guys get jealous easily and stuff?”

Malleus took a moment before responding.”Well yes I do believe fae get very territorial…while I do admit we can get jealous most of the time it's more so out of a place of protection and wanting our partner to be comfortable rather than out of pure envy—not to say we don't sometimes get jealous of course” He spoked. You hummed, sitting back on your knees.

“Courting someone is like taking a small piece of you and giving it to another. It's a big commitment so it's only natural to feel a sense of possessiveness when it comes to the person you devote yourself to“ The prince added on with a shrug. You placed a hand on your chin, hanging onto his words.

“That sounds… intense,” you admitted with a chuckle, fidgeting with the drawstrings of your pajama shorts. “But also kind of romantic in a way.”

Malleus tilted his head, watching you intently. “Do you find it romantic, child of man? The idea of being cherished so deeply I mean” he said, words soft and careful.

Your heart skipped a beat at the question. The way he asked it, his voice low and steady, made you feel as though the room had somehow gotten smaller.

You fumbled for a response, you could feel the way blood rushed to your cheeks. “I-I mean, I guess so? It’s nice to think someone would care that much. But, um, I don’t think humans handle that kind of intensity as well as fae do,”

Malleus watched you with an intensity you couldn't quite place, His green eyes taking in your features and reactions.

“I suppose not,” he mused, “human emotion always amazes me, you know, such little time yet so much emotion it's truly fascinating in my opinon “ He mumbled. You hummed in response clearly lost in thought. It got silent for just a moment.

“Have you ever been jealous, Malleus?” you asked suddenly, the question slipping out before you could stop yourself.

Malleus blinked, surprised by your sudden boldness , a faint blush dusted his cheeks. He looked away, just like earlier when you had asked about courting.

“Jealousy… is not something I have experienced often. But,” he hesitated, his gaze returning to yours, “I cannot say I am immune to it…there have been times where my emotions get the better of me” the horned fae admitted.

You tilted your head, curiosity sparking in your eyes. A playful smile tugged at your lips “Oh Really? What kind of things would make someone like you jealous?” you asked, your tone teasing, yet curiosity laced your words as well.

Malleus gave a soft chuckle and playfully rolled his eyes, though his blush deepened slightly. “I suppose… moments when a certain someone I hold dea gives their attention to another,” he admitted his words more serious now. “It is not a feeling I take pride in but I cannot deny that I don't like seeing them with… others if I myself are not involve;it's selfish yes but I cannot help but feel possessive at times“

Your eyes widened a bit in surprise, you just looked down and nodded. “Yeah I honestly get that… I think it’s natural to want someone’s attention, especially when you care about them. It doesn’t make you bad, it just means… well, you care.” you muttered.

You were taken aback by the sudden feeling of slender fingers on your face. You blushed as one of Malleus’s hands found their way on your cheek. You couldn't help but melt.

“Yeah…” is all he said, yet it felt as if there was more that threatened to leave his tongue. The room was silent once more. Neither of you moved, just watched each other. The rays of the setting sun falling onto you.

If he were to court you…would you accept it? Is what he wanted to say. If he were to go home would you take his hand? Instead he just stayed quiet green eyes observing you. There's still very little he knew about humans. Very little he knew about you.

He did know he wanted to be with you...

MASTERLIST

[sunny-knight]

Dear My Dear -

an @forgettable-au fan-slideshow

At the end of their journey, Sans has remembered everything. And theres only one question on his mind now…

*now what?

Its lore time. omg theres so much-

The way ill organize this…lIll start with the GENERAL thing, before getting more spesific, and explain each slide in way too much detail.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

This is the hypothetical end to their journey. Sans and Papyrus remember what happened, and this is how Sans is handling it. A letter to Wingdings.

I was hesitant to make this at first for obvious reasons- we dont know how its gonna end!!! But I took this more as a “what if ?” scenario. IF they ever remember anything, how would Sans specifically, react? I mean thats gotta be tough.

Because of that though, lot of what happened to lead up to this is kept vague.

ill explain in way more detail how Sans got to the point of writing this letter, and how he feels in the end when I explain each slide individually. But the reason why, the MAIN ISSUE is…

Over the years, hes put so much effort into enjoying what he has. And- nothings even changed!!! So why does he feel so much has? Now that he remembers what he lost…WHO he lost. He cant help but have this voice in the back of his head that says “would it have been better if that never happened? if Papyrus never existed?” and of course he absolutely hates to think that! but the voice gets louder. Writing this letter, is an act of closure. Of laying to rest someone he never got to. Someone he never even really got to do much with.

(Excuse the shitty quality of the images- I promise they’re better. WATCH THE VIDEO)

my dear wingdings,)

Sans says “wingdings” here instead of “brother”. that’s important. Also its on a white void, showing a sorta “heavenly imagery” with the mention of Wingdings. Also Gaster is in a BLACK void, but hes talking about WD here, so, contradictions.

you never came back, and now…after remembering everything everything clearly i understand why.)

Sans and Papyrus are sitting by a fire at night. They are both sorta lost in their own worlds at the moment, but are more or less leaning on one another for comfort and support. They both need each other right now despite each other being the whole reason why they feel the way they do right now-

Papyrus is notably no longer wearing the white coat that somewhat resembles a lab coat. Symbolism! Growth!

(art note: I drew Sans as a lefty in this- cherish it. It was so hard to draw these hands at these angles- CHERISH IT.)

i don’t imagine you’ll receive this letter, but i, nonetheless, must send it. wingdings….oh ‘dings…)

the first part is somewhat of a self aware/sarcastic joke. Sans is writing this letter for himself- he doesn’t imagine Wingdings, the dead man, will ever see it. Nor would Gaster care to read it. Thats another important thing, this is NOT a letter for Gaster. This is a letter for Wingdings. which is for Sans

The star in the sky symbolizes a few different things- the main one being Wingdings ofc. But also Papyrus’ expectations of himself- which mainly come from who he was. He’s looking at it, reflecting, thinking of what Wingdings did, and what Papyrus has done. Who he is NOW, and if he ever was Wingdings.

Or if Wingdings just became him.

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square type thing.

i was just starting to dream the silliest- the softest of dreams. i miss you. and i will always miss you.)

2 contradictions, what Sans used to think, vs what he knows now. The memories were fuzzy- he couldn’t remember The Royal Scientist, he just feels like he remembers some nice times. Before now knowing everything clearly. And he still misses it- slightly.

The reflections are blacked out at first, before showing their future selves. Before, there was no connection to the present because it wasnt true. It felt like/was 2 completely different things

but i cannot live like that.)

Sans can still tell, even without the rose tinted glasses view he used to have, he cant live missing the past and not living in the present. He always knew that, but repeating it here makes him feel better.

Pictured is Sans and Papyrus hiking up the mountain next to the city as the sun sets. Papyrus is in full view of the light, but is facing away in order to help Sans see it too. Symbolism!

and it seems you cannot live any other way.)

another reference to the fact that Wingdings cant live… at all now. But also an awareness that part of him lives on in Gaster. The thing that killed him.

I doubt hes going to change in any way by the end of the comics, he’s far to obsessive about angels and the player for childish stuff like “growth” and “changing for the better as a human being”

when i was with you, the world made sense. but now that we are apart, i see clearly that your world is not a world from which one can escape.)

When they were together, they knew what they wanted to be. They wanted to be scientists. But after being apart so long and experiencing so much uncertainty, Sans finds that mindset is unhealthy. Again, a lot of this is stuff he already knew, but is repeating to himself because after remembering everything, he feels as if hes back at square one.

As kids they would test echo flowers, for science purposes! We don’t know yet if WDs voice comes through on them, but I imagine not… maybe. But for this we’re gonna say no. Their speech bubbles are trying so hard to be circles- the scribbles also somewhat resemble stars because I thought that’d be fun.

But the last slide has it shown that he dug them out, also for science purposes!

He took the echo flowers from their roots, much later on in his lab career. That in itself isnt that bad, but it symbolizes that he doesn’t care much for taking things slow. He wants to test with echo flowers? **TAKES EVERY SINGLE ONE WITHIN A 100 MILE RADIUS**

Also the empty holes reflects sort of what happened after he died. All of the underground was left with holes to fill. Sans, a childhood/brother. Alphys, the royal scientist. Those are the main ones but he was THE ROYAL SCIENTIST im sure there were more (smaller) holes that may or may not have been filled.

Ok and the last thing the flowers being taken out represent- he took the ones specifically from when they were kids, and abandoned what was left for the grass to grow tall and the entire area to be, in general, a lot flatter. In his quest to basically never grow up and continue being the thing he KNEW he wanted to be since kindergarten- he’s taken everything and left the rest in the dust. He’s The Royal Scientist now, he “doesn’t need anything else.”

i’m so sorry. for everything. for everything long ago, and for starting up that machine again.

Sans knows he could have been better. He could have done things differently, and that thought messes with him, even before he remembered.

The 2nd image is Sans at Grillbys after another failed attempt to get Wingdings outside. Despite the fact that he could have done things differently, theres no real reason to be “sorry” But still, he cant help but feel like he should be. He could have done things differently- could have tried harder, and gotten Wingdings out more often- or at all.

Im not sure where the machine in Sans’ lab comes into play in this AU, but it worked for the purposes of this audio.

theres a good man within you, wingdings. but he is wrestling with a giant. and the giant WINS time and again.)

Before everything, there was still a good man inside Wingdings that Sans saw. But now that he’s Gaster he just cant see him ever changing... and yknow what hes probably right. Like Papyrus says! Anyone can be a good person if they just try!…Gaster just isnt trying

“Wins” being emphasized here, I enjoy, since its sorta a video gamey term. The giant hes wrestling is that/the player, after all. Also probably his ego

I also had fun with kid Wingdings and what he’s drawing. Ofc its all him and Sans plus silly little stars, but him being finished drawing Sans, but not yet finished drawing himself, symbolizes the fact that at that age he still didn’t really know what he wanted to be, I feel like Wingdings kinda remembers the past wrong. Sure he definitely had science on the mind, but younger kids are often filled with questions, he questions if thats truly where he’d be the happiest.

Thats the good man within him

you’ve broken my soul again, and i fear i have broken yours. and for that i will never forgive myself, but i need to let you go now.)

the star represents, again, Wingdings. And the moon represents Sans, which shines only under the Suns (Papyrus’) light.

The sun is beginning to rise, and Sans and Papyrus are beginning to leave. Sans puts out the fire, closing this chapter of his life.

Because of every reason he needed to relearn/re-reflect on listed here, hes ready to let Wingdings go now. Sans is the one to put out the fire here, and not Papyrus, cause this is from the perspective of how SANS handles putting this issue to rest. Papyrus can have his own fire to put out later

Another thing about putting out the fire, thats just kinda common knowledge to do especially at a public camping spot. Yknow what else is common knowledge to do so you dont disrupt the community?? NOT REPLANTING FLOWERS-

Its not that deep…but still-

i send you the radio you made many years ago when we were kids. not because i dont want it, but… because i care for it far too much and it reminds me too much of you.)

CALL BACK!!!!!!

Sans leaves this last memento to Wingdings, the last thing they have that has nothing to do with Papyrus. Because at this point theres no reason to keep it, in Sans’ mind at least. There’s also no reason to destroy it- Like he says, hes not leaving it out of malice, theres just no good that will come from keeping it and holding onto the past.

As the sun rises, here we see the brothers leaving. in contrast to before, Sans is helping Papyrus down. Helping him down from the spotlight, the expectations he’s set upon himself. Another kick that Papyrus still has much more to reflect on and think about, he’s still looking back at that light, at a shooting star, at everything he thought he wanted to be.

i hope one day you will find some kind people who with appreciate you. for it kept me thinking of you all these years.)

GASTER FOLLOWERS!!!

Despite everything, Sans still wants whats left of Wingdings, Gaster, to be happy and find something, anyone, that will give him true happiness. It’s left ambiguous however if they truly do, do that for him. If it’s at all healthy.

cause frankly i have no idea how theyll be included. but just like everything- i cant wait to find out

and i hope by returning it to you, i can finally be free. goodbye.

- your brother

As the sun rises, the star gets smaller and smaller and eventually the sun replaces it. Remember when I said Papyrus represents the sun? SYMBOLISM!!!

Also about that, the star shines brighter than anything, but the Sun is among a lot of clouds, depicting how isolated Wingdings is/was despite shining the brightest, vs Papyrus who also does indeed shine! but isn’t isolated whatsoever.

Now, remember when I said Sans saying “my dear wingdings” instead of “my dear brother” was important? well, he acknowledges that he is still Wingdings’ brother, despite everything. So he signs off as “your brother” but… He’ll always try to remember Wingdings fondly…but…he’s unsure if he considers Wingdings his brother anymore- just because of how much they’ve changed. Thats why the whole thing is called Dear My Dear.

the radio + letter remains there in the end. I briefly played with the idea of having them disappear as the sun came out, implying that Gaster took the radio and reas the letter, but that was before I realized it was much better for this to be for Wingdings specifically, not Gaster/Wingdings/whatever.

FINALE!!! PLUS SOME BEHIND THE SCENES INFO!!!

weeps pitifully this was probably the most fun i’ve had with a project/the most happy i’ve come out of one. Learned lots about my process’ and what works! so thats awesome It took a while to make, so theres a lot of stuff I changed or ideas I scrapped that I find interesting, so im gonna show some of that on my side/shitpost account, @o-sunny-day

also isnt this so awesome???? I got a computer so I got to post more images than just 10, THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!

Have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Heres to being a bigger, better, and different person this year! except not really because despite everything its still you.

un-unless you…got shattered across time and space…. then you’re-

well I mean that-….. hm…

does that…? hmm, well….

[buttercandy16]

Watchful Eyes

PAIRING(s): Professor!Agatha Harkness x Student!Reader

SUMMARY: A student’s admiration for their enigmatic professor spirals into obsession—but the deeper they delve, the more they uncover a dark game they may never escape.

WARNING(s): Dub-Con. Obsession. Manipulation. Possession. Stalking. Toxicity. Power. Control. Age-Gap. SMUT

A/N: More smut! Happy Holidays!

The lecture hall was always quiet before she entered. It was like the air itself held its breath, waiting for her to walk through the door. Professor Agatha Harkness was more than just your teacher. She was an enigma, a force that seemed to exist outside of time, out of reach, untouchable. She moved with an effortless grace that left you breathless every time you saw her. Her dark eyes, sharp and calculating, would briefly flick over you as she began the lecture, and in those moments, you’d feel as if your very soul was being studied.

But it wasn’t just admiration. It wasn’t just fascination. You were obsessed with her. You had been for months. Every moment you spent in class, every fleeting interaction, every look from her—it consumed you. You couldn’t focus on anything else. No other professor, no other student, not even the rest of the world existed for you anymore. Just Agatha.

You would find yourself following her, stalking her every move after class. At first, it was innocent enough. You simply wanted to know where she went after her lectures. What kind of person was she when she wasn’t standing at the front of the classroom, speaking with that confident, almost distant air? It started with casual observations, standing on the fringes of the campus, watching her walk alone through the park after class, her figure framed by the golden light of dusk. But soon, it became an obsession. You would take longer routes home, just to watch her, just to see where she went, who she talked to.

You began leaving her notes—anonymous, of course. Written in the darkest corners of your mind, each word you penned carried the weight of your obsession, but none of it ever gave away the depth of your feelings. You’d slip them under her office door, or leave them tucked into the margins of her books in the library.

At first, you thought it would be enough for her to notice. For her to see you, to understand the quiet adoration that pulsed through you every moment you were in her presence. But as the weeks went by, you began to feel something darker, something sharper. You craved more than her acknowledgment. You craved her. You wanted her, needed her.

You didn’t realize it at first, but she had begun to notice you too. There were glances, lingering just a moment too long. A raised eyebrow when you hesitated during office hours, as if she was waiting for you to say something more. The soft, knowing smile she gave you in the hallway, her eyes flicking to the note you’d slipped under her door only hours earlier. It was subtle, but you could feel it. She was paying attention.

And then, one fateful afternoon, you found yourself standing outside her office once again. This time, your heart was pounding louder than ever before, your mind racing with fantasies of what would happen if you were to step inside and confess everything. The door was ajar, just enough for you to see the soft, warm light spilling into the hallway.

You knocked, breath caught in your throat, and waited. For what, you weren’t sure. But you could already feel the heat of anticipation, your mind filled with a thousand scenarios of what might happen once she let you in.

“Come in,” came her voice, soft, almost reluctant, but unmistakably hers.

You pushed the door open slowly, the heavy wood creaking under your touch. The sight of her standing behind her desk made your pulse race. She looked so much like a goddess in this dim, golden light, her dark eyes watching you with a strange, unreadable intensity.

“Miss [Your Last Name],” Agatha greeted you, her tone calm but strangely tense. “What brings you to my office today?”

You swallowed, stepping into the room. “I—I needed to talk about the last lecture,” you began, your voice shaking slightly. It felt like an excuse, but you couldn’t bring yourself to admit the real reason you were here.

She nodded slowly, her lips curving into a faint smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was something about her posture, something about the way she shifted uneasily in her chair, that made you pause. She wasn’t looking at you with the same cool, detached air she usually did. There was… wariness in her gaze.

“Is everything alright, Miss [Your Last Name]?” she asked, her voice smooth but strained.

You frowned, not sure how to respond. The way she was watching you felt different now. She was standing a little straighter, her back stiff, as if she were on alert. Had she… noticed your obsession?

“I just—I wanted to talk about the material,” you said, your words faltering as you saw the flicker of something strange pass through her eyes.

She took a small step back, pressing her palms flat on the desk as if bracing herself. “You’ve been coming around a lot lately,” she remarked, her voice soft, almost hesitant. “I’ve noticed. More than usual. You’ve been… lingering outside my office, following me after class. I—” She faltered, her eyes flicking to the door, as though considering whether or not to close it. “Are you… alright, Miss [Your Last Name]?”

For a moment, you were confused. What was she saying? She sounded—scared.

“Of course I’m alright,” you said, your voice growing louder, more insistent. “I just—” You stopped yourself, unable to say the words out loud. You wanted her. But she seemed distant, afraid of you. Why? Had she realized your obsession? Was she… repulsed?

Agatha took another slow step back, her eyes darting toward the door. She seemed to be calculating something. “I’ve… been meaning to speak to you about your behavior,” she said, her voice trembling ever so slightly. “I’ve noticed how you watch me, how you follow me. It’s not… normal, Miss [Your Last Name]. I’m afraid I have to report this.” Her words were like a slap in the face.

You froze. You had never imagined she would say something like that. The words cut deeper than you could have ever expected.

“I—I’m sorry,” you stammered, your heart thudding painfully in your chest. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” You stepped back, as though she were about to send you away. The reality of the situation was sinking in, and it hurt. She had noticed, and now she was scared of you.

Agatha’s expression softened for a brief second. Then, like a switch being flipped, her features hardened. She straightened, eyes narrowing, lips curling into a slow, deliberate smile.

“No,” she whispered, her voice dark now, the calm exterior gone, replaced by something that felt far more dangerous. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable, Miss [Your Last Name]. You enthralled me. All this time, I’ve been watching you too.”

You blinked, confusion clouding your mind. What? What was she talking about?

Agatha’s smile widened, an almost predatory gleam in her eyes. “I’ve been watching you just as much as you’ve been watching me. You thought you were the one in control, didn’t you? But I was always the one in control.” Her voice dripped with something darker, something seductive, and it sent a shiver down your spine.

Your breath caught in your throat. “W-what do you mean?”

She leaned in closer, her lips brushing your ear. “I let you play your little game, Miss [Your Last Name]. I let you think you were the one pulling the strings. But the truth is, you were just a piece of my game all along.”

You could feel your heart thundering in your chest. Was this some sort of twisted joke? Agatha seemed so distant, so terrified of you just moments ago. But now, her presence was overwhelming, suffocating. It was clear now that she had been playing a far darker game than you could ever comprehend.

She cupped your chin in her hand, tilting your face toward hers. “You thought you were the predator. You thought you were the one stalking me. But in reality, you were always mine.” Her lips pressed lightly against your ear, her voice dropping lower. “And now… now I think it’s time to finish what we started.”

The twist of her hand as she pulled you closer left you breathless, unable to move, entirely under her control. Her obsession with you had been simmering beneath the surface this entire time, and you were just too blind to see it.

As you were pulled into her grasp, the realization hit you like a shockwave—You had never been the one in control.

Agatha’s hand lingered at the edge of your jaw, firm but teasing. Her smile widened as you trembled, her gray eyes locked onto yours like a hawk sizing up its prey. It was as though the world had collapsed inward, leaving just the two of you in the oppressive, stifling silence of her office.

“I’ve been patient with you, darling,” she murmured, her tone syrupy but laced with a razor’s edge. “Watching you unravel, watching you think you had the upper hand… it was delicious. But now I think it’s time I stopped playing along.”

Her confession pierced your chest like a dagger. Your knees felt weak, and you stumbled back, only to find yourself trapped between the door and her looming presence.

“You knew?” The words slipped out in a whisper, small and broken.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she laughed softly, the sound rich and velvety, dripping with dark amusement. “Of course I knew. Did you really think you could follow me, linger around my office, and flood my desk with your little letters without me noticing? You were never subtle. But that’s what made it fun.”

Fun? Her words were mocking, taunting. Your obsession, the thing that consumed you for months, the thing you thought was hidden deep beneath layers of careful secrecy—she had known all along and had let you indulge in your madness.

“But you…” you stuttered, your mind struggling to piece together the fragmented truths unfolding before you. “You acted like you were scared—like I was…”

Her head tilted, that soft smirk never wavering. “Oh, I played the victim beautifully, didn’t I? Just enough fear, just enough hesitation to make you think you had the upper hand. People like you—people so desperate, so reckless—fall apart when they think they’re in control.” She leaned closer, her voice soft and sinister. “And you fell apart perfectly.”

Your breath hitched. She wasn’t just acknowledging your obsession—she was savoring it, as if every twisted act of devotion you’d shown her had been part of some elaborate game.

“Why?” The question escaped your lips before you could stop it. You hated how weak it sounded, how small you felt under her intense, unrelenting gaze.

She reached out, brushing her fingers lightly against your cheek, her touch both chilling and electrifying. “Because I wanted you,” she said simply, as though it was the most natural answer in the world. “From the moment I saw you in class, sitting there with that mix of fear and fascination in your eyes, I knew. I could feel the weight of your thoughts every time you looked at me. It was intoxicating.”

Your stomach twisted, the realization slowly dawning. She hadn’t just been aware of your obsession—she had wanted it. Encouraged it.

“You thought you were the one losing control,” she continued, her voice growing darker, “but really, I’ve been guiding you the entire time. Feeding your obsession, letting you think you were pulling me into your web, when it was my web all along.”

You shook your head, your mind screaming at you to push her away, to run, but your body was frozen. Every muscle, every nerve seemed to betray you under the weight of her presence.

“I could’ve stopped you at any moment,” she purred, her hand sliding to your throat, resting there lightly. “But where’s the fun in that? Watching you spiral deeper, watching you stumble closer to me—it was addictive.” Her grip tightened, just slightly, enough to make your breath catch. “You’re addictive.”

You tried to speak, tried to protest, but the words were caught in your throat. She was too close now, her breath hot against your skin, her body pressing against yours.

“And now, my darling,” she whispered, her voice dropping to a dangerous low, “you’ve given yourself to me completely. Your secrets, your devotion, your obsession—I own all of it. I own you.”

Her lips brushed your ear, and your stomach flipped. You could feel the power she held over you, the suffocating control she exerted without effort.

“And the best part?” she continued, her tone turning almost gleeful. “You never even saw it coming. You really thought I was afraid of you? Poor, naïve little thing. I’ve had you wrapped around my finger from the very beginning.”

A sudden wave of anger surged through you, a last-ditch effort to break free of her hold. “You’re sick,” you spat, your voice trembling with equal parts fear and defiance.

Her laugh was low and chilling, her fingers tightening just enough to make you gasp. “Oh, my sweet girl,” she cooed, “you’re just as sick as I am. Maybe worse. After all, you started this game. I’m just making sure I win.”

Her grip loosened suddenly, and you stumbled back against the door, your head spinning. The room felt smaller, darker, as if her presence had consumed every bit of air.

“But don’t worry,” she said, her voice soft again, almost soothing, as she stepped closer. “You don’t need to run, my darling. There’s nowhere to go. You’re mine now. Completely.”

She tilted her head, her eyes glinting with a strange, terrifying mix of affection and possession. “And I’m yours,” she added, her voice a whisper. “You just don’t realize yet how much you’ve always been in control.”

Her hand cupped your chin again, pulling you toward her until her lips were almost touching yours. “The question is,” she murmured, her voice barely audible, “how far are you willing to let this go?”

Agatha’s hand on your chin held firm as she tilted your head up to meet her gaze. Her gray eyes were unreadable now, vast and stormy, but with an intensity that made your stomach churn. You opened your mouth to speak—to do something, anything—but no sound escaped.

“Speechless already?” she teased, her lips curving upward as her thumb grazed your jawline. “I thought you liked this game. Don’t tell me you’re scared now.”

“I—” you stammered, your voice catching in your throat. For the first time since this obsession began, you felt the sharp sting of vulnerability. Your skin prickled as a realization crawled through your mind. She wasn’t just obsessed with you. This wasn’t a harmless game of attraction. This was something darker.

You stepped back, pressing yourself against the door as you tried to create some distance. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the way she was looking at you—as though you were hers to take, to claim, to keep.

“Scared, my darling?” she asked, her voice soft but taunting, almost pitying. “I don’t blame you. It must be jarring to realize the one you’ve been chasing all this time has been chasing you right back.”

“Stop,” you croaked, your voice weak as your heart pounded against your ribcage. “This isn’t—this isn’t what I wanted.”

She laughed softly, the sound like velvet brushing against glass, sharp and smooth. “Oh, but it is,” she countered, her voice laced with something cruelly sweet. “You wanted me—needed me—so desperately. Don’t deny it now that I’m giving you exactly what you craved.”

“No,” you whispered, shaking your head. Your breathing was shallow, panicked. The reality of her presence, of her predatory gaze, pressed against you like a weight you couldn’t escape.

Her expression softened, and for a fleeting moment, you thought she might actually let you go. But then she stepped closer, her movements slow and deliberate, like a lion stalking a cornered prey.

“I see it in your eyes,” she murmured, brushing a strand of hair from your face. Her touch was gentle, but it sent a cold shiver down your spine. “That fear. That uncertainty. Do you know what I find most fascinating about fear?”

You tried to push her away, but her hand caught your wrist in an iron grip. The softness in her eyes disappeared, replaced by something dark and unrelenting.

“It’s addictive,” she said, her voice low, almost intimate. “It makes you vulnerable, exposes all your deepest, darkest secrets. And you? You’ve already bared everything to me. You belong to me, body and soul.”

Your pulse raced as her words wrapped around you like chains. There was no denying it anymore—she wasn’t just indulging your obsession. She was feeding on it, twisting it into something you couldn’t control.

“Please,” you whispered, the word slipping out before you could stop it.

Agatha tilted her head, studying you like an artist admiring her masterpiece. “Oh, darling,” she cooed, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “You don’t need to beg. I’ve already decided you’re mine. Forever.”

Her grip on your wrist tightened as she leaned closer, her lips brushing against your ear. “You thought you were stalking me,” she whispered, her breath warm and chilling all at once. “But all this time, I’ve been waiting for you to come closer. To fall right into my arms. And now, my sweet, there’s no escape.”

You tried to pull away, your movements frantic, but she was relentless. Her hand slid down your wrist, pinning it against the door as she loomed over you.

“Why are you doing this?” you demanded, your voice trembling.

Her eyes softened for a brief moment, and she smiled—not the sharp, taunting smirk from before, but something gentler, almost tender. “Because I love you,” she said simply. “More than you’ll ever understand.”

The words sent a wave of terror crashing over you. This wasn’t love. This was obsession—pure, unrelenting, and suffocating.

“But you can’t leave, you know that,” she continued, her tone matter-of-fact now, as if your fate had already been sealed. “I’ve spent too long waiting for you, nurturing this… connection we share. And now that I have you, I’m never letting you go.”

Her lips brushed your temple, her breath ghosting against your skin. “You thought you were in control, but I’ve been ten steps ahead all along. Every glance, every note, every word—it was all leading to this moment.”

“I’ll go to the police,” you spat, the fear in your voice betrayed by the sheer desperation of the words.

She pulled back slightly, and for the first time, her smirk faltered. But it wasn’t fear you saw in her eyes. It was amusement.

“Oh, darling,” she said, chuckling softly. “And tell them what? That you stalked me? Left me unhinged notes? Or that you followed me home and watched me from the shadows like a ghost? No one will believe you. And even if they did—” She paused, her smile turning cruel. “Do you really think I’ll let them take you away from me?”

Tears stung your eyes as the weight of her words sank in. She had thought of everything, planned for every possibility. There was no way out, no escape from her carefully constructed web.

Agatha stepped back slightly, her hand lingering on your wrist as she studied your face. “Don’t cry, my darling,” she said softly, her voice almost soothing. “This isn’t a punishment. It’s a gift. You wanted me, and now you have me. Completely. Isn’t that what you wanted all along?”

You shook your head, your chest tightening as her words wrapped around you like a noose.

Agatha sighed, releasing your wrist but staying close enough that her presence felt suffocating. “You’ll understand, in time,” she murmured. “This is love, in its purest form. And soon, you’ll see that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be. With me. Forever.”

As her words echoed in the suffocating silence, you realized with a growing sense of dread that she meant every word.

Suddenly, Agatha’s lips crashed into yours with a ferocity that left you gasping, her teeth nipping at your bottom lip before her tongue plunged into your mouth. The taste of her was intoxicating—dark, sweet, and dangerous. Her hands gripped your hips, pulling you flush against her, and you could feel the heat of her body through the thin fabric of her blouse. 

She broke the kiss, her breath hot against your skin as she whispered, “You’re mine now, darling. Every inch of you.” Her fingers trailed down your sides, leaving a trail of fire in their wake, before she grabbed the hem of your shirt and yanked it over your head. The cool air of the office hit your skin, but it did nothing to quell the heat building inside you.

Agatha’s eyes raked over your body, her gaze predatory and possessive. “Beautiful,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. She stepped closer, her hands sliding up your sides to cup your breasts, her thumbs brushing over your nipples, making them harden instantly. You gasped, your head falling back as she leaned in to capture one in her mouth, her tongue swirling around the sensitive peak.

Her hands moved to your waist, unbuttoning your pants and sliding them down your legs, leaving you in nothing but your panties. She knelt before you, her hands running up your thighs, her nails digging into your skin just enough to make you whimper. “So wet for me already,” she purred, her breath hot against your core. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of your panties and pulled them down, tossing them aside.

Agatha’s tongue darted out, licking a stripe up your slit, and you moaned, your hands tangling in her hair. She chuckled darkly, her breath ghosting over your sensitive flesh. “You taste divine, darling,” she murmured before diving in, her tongue lapping at your folds, teasing your clit with expert precision. You cried out, your hips bucking against her face as she devoured you, her hands gripping your thighs to keep you in place.

She pulled back, her lips glistening with your arousal, and stood, her eyes locked on yours. You whimpered, your body trembling with need. “Please, stop,” you whispered, your voice shaky.

She smirked, her hands moving to unbutton her blouse, revealing the black lace bra beneath. She shrugged it off, her breasts spilling free, and you couldn’t help but stare. She was perfect, her skin smooth and pale, her nipples hard and begging for attention. She reached behind her, unclasping her bra and letting it fall to the floor.

She leaned in, capturing your lips in a searing kiss, her tongue tangling with yours. You moaned into her mouth, your hands gripping her shoulders as she pressed her body against yours.

She broke the kiss, her lips trailing down your neck, leaving a trail of hot, wet kisses in their wake. Her hands moved to your waist, unbuttoning her pants and sliding them down her legs, leaving her in nothing but her black lace panties. She stepped out of them, her body pressed against yours, and you could feel the heat of her core against your thigh.

Agatha’s hand slid between your legs, her fingers teasing your folds before slipping inside you. You gasped, your head falling back as she curled her fingers, hitting that spot inside you that made you see stars.

“Please," you whimpered.

She leaned in, her lips brushing against your ear. "You're mine now," she whispered. "Every inch of you."

You tried to pull away from her, but she held you tight. "No," you whispered, shaking your head. "I can't do this. I can't be yours."

Agatha's hands tightened around your wrists, her nails biting into your skin. She smirked, her eyes gleaming with triumph. "Oh," she purred. "But you're already mine, darling. And nothing is going to change that."

Pressing her body against yours. "I'll never let you go," she whispered, her breath hot against your neck.

And then her lips crushed against yours, her teeth nipping at the bottom of your mouth before she thrust her tongue inside. You whimpered, trying to fight it, but her hold was too strong.

She pulled away, her eyes flashing with anger. "You should be grateful for what I'm doing for you," she snarled. "You should thank me for making you mine."

Panting heavily, her eyes wild with desire. "Tell me," she demanded. "Tell me you're mine."

You shook your head, tears streaming down your cheeks. "Please," you whispered. "Let me go."

Agatha smirked. "Never," she said. And then her lips were back on yours, her tongue demanding entrance.

You tried to fight it, but she was too strong. And soon, your mouth was opening, accepting her tongue. She moaned, her body pressing harder against yours, her hands still holding your wrists above your head.

"You're so perfect," she murmured against your lips. "So perfect for me." She leaned back, her eyes scanning over your body. "You'll be my perfect little pet," she purred, her hand moving to your breast. She pinched your nipple, making you gasp. "I'll train you to do whatever I want," she continued. "Whatever I want, you'll do."

She smiled, her fingers moving down your body to your core. She slipped her fingers inside you, curling them to hit that spot that made you moan. "And I'll make you cum for me," she whispered against your lips. "I'll make you cum so hard."

You tried to protest, but her hand over your mouth stopped you from speaking. She pressed her fingers deeper inside you, hitting that sensitive spot over and over.

You were trying to hold on, but it was impossible. Her fingers were too skilled, too good. You tried to push her away, but she didn't budge. And then the pleasure exploded inside you, making you cum on her fingers.

Agatha pulled her hand away, her fingers glistening with your wetness. She brought her hand to her mouth, sucking your juices off. "Delicious," she purred.

You stood there, shaking from the orgasm and the realization of what just happened. Agatha had taken control of your body, forcing you to submit to her desires.

You had played with fire, and now, you were trapped in the flames. Her flames.

_-_-_

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[arvlelt]

crawling back to you.

pairing - vi x fem!reader

cw - nsfw, mdni 18+, yall are ex fling things, vi is down BADDD, oral (r. recieving), teasing, drunkish sex, angst (?), munch!vi, switch!vi (sub!leaning?), praise, slight overstimulation, slight biting, dirty talk, fluff, lmk if i missed anything.

summary - vi never thought she'd see you again. simply existing in her mind as somebody that she used to know, but there you were, staring at her from outside the ring in disbelief.

w.count - 2.9k+

a/n - haven’t written in a fat minute so i apologize if this is butt. but i’ve been watching arcane and saw how much content it lacked on here so ello :) not rlly proofread

her ear drums were ringing and everything was spinning as they declared vi the winner once again, her fist coming up in the air to show victory.

to say that vi had gone off the wagon was, an understatement to say the least. first, you and vi had stop talking for awhile now, and it seemed like it was finally catching up to vi that she wasn't going to see you again.

she had tried distractions, a pretty girl with blue straight hair, but of course that was never going to be enough to forget the kind of girl you were.

ever since you had gone your separate ways, everything felt like a daze to her. it's not like she did anything different. she fell into the hole of drinking and violence since you left. and as she scanned the room around her, seeing all the cheers, as well as some being fairly disappointed in her opponents loss, she felt as if her eyes were deceiving her when she saw a familiar face in the crowd.

one that she didn't want to see her in this state.

she scoffed and brushed it off, convincing herself it was the alcohol messing with her senses.

you couldn't believe what you were seeing, you weren't going to deny that she only got more attractive to you, but what on earth happened?

back when you and vi were still together she barely sipped on alcohol, and there she was stumbling and fighting in the ring.

you were barely downing your 4th shot before you heard people shouting for the winner, and your curiosity got the best of you, as some part of you was hoping one day you'd bump into her again.

you watched as she stumbled to grab her fair share, she made eye contact with you, but you were sure she didn't believe it was you.

you didn't want to believe it when there was word of a new hot fighter in the ring that had a streak of winning.

it’s not like you kept tabs on her, your curiosity got the best of you when she became the talk of the undercity. and her little ring happened to be located at the same place as your favorite bar.

you made your way through the crowd to get to where she would get out the ring.

you watched her stumble out the ring, "...vi?" oh someone had to have roofied her drink. because why did vi hear the voice of the girl that caused her all this.

her low eyes looked up in the direction of your voice, the people around them were in her field of vision but she could make out your figure in the crowd.

this had happened to vi before, where she would hallucinate you while being extremely intoxicated. and she thought this was another one of those times as she groaned and closed her eyes, hoping the hallucination would go away.

you made your way to her, you didn't know why as you two didn't really set off on the best of terms.

the roars of the crows and the music was messing with vi, and it wasn't until you were in front of her, hands reaching out to maybe cradle her face that she realized it wasn’t one of those times.

vi looked different. black hair, black makeup on her face, and eyes filled with something you couldn't quite define.

your fingers brushed her face, concern evident on your face as vi took you in, "oh, vi. what happened to you?" and vi broke.

she basically leaped into your arms, one arm wrapping around your waist, and the other coming up to cradle the back of your head. yours found themselves around her neck, one hand brushing the back of her nape. and suddenly everything, all the emotions, all the memories, came flooding back into vi.

"are you real?" you could barely make out what she said as you were recovering from her very evident desperation to have you in her arms.

it was very uncharacteristic of her. the last time you two had seen each other, some awful things were said and it ended with vi walking out on you.

but even with how you two had ended, you knew that if you ever saw her again you wouldn't be able to help wanting to help her.

and that's how you ended up at her very messy apartment. well, before you ordered more drinks for yourself as you caught up with vi in the bar. you helped her home and she was very evidently drunk, but that didn't stop her from talking her mind to you.

"'m sorry about everything i said to you. i didn't mean it. i hope you know that, ive missed you so much," her words were slurred as you took her up the stairs of her apartment, your hand gripping her by the waist and the other grabbing her hand that was around your shoulder.

you could feel your heart racing at her words.

your eyes looked at her for a sec, "you're drunk, vi. tell me all this when we're sober, kay?" you continued up the stairs as you could hear vi scoff at you, dragging you a bit as her footing was off.

"just because im drunk doesn't mean shit. i'd still bend you over and eat that up," you could hear the shit-eating grin she had. her vulgar word definitely got to you as you felt the back your ears heating up, the alcohol making you want to just let her have her way with you.

"violet, get the fuck inside, please." your hands gripped her hand a little harder at the thought of that happening, again.

you could hear her drunkenly laugh before listening and making it easier for you to lead her up.

vi stumbled at her door as you watched her open the door, "don't mind the mess, pretty. but i guess you have seen worse," you remembered how messy her room could get.

vi got comfy on her bed, leaning back before sitting back up.

you stepped in and closed the door behind you. there were bottles littered all over the floor, but other than that it was just unorganized. her bed was a pillow with one blanket, "yeah sorry, not much to offer."

you could feel guilt and sadness overwhelming you, is this what she's being going through lately? and for how long? vi didn't seem to notice your weariness as you approached her.

vi was looking down and noticed your feet suddenly in front of her. she looked up at you. "what's up?"

your hands couldn't help themselves as they held her face, "are you okay?"

vi smiled in your hands, "better now that i have you here," vi could see that you weren't convinced, "don't worry 'bout me, sweetheart," one of her hands came up to grab one of your hands, brushing your hand with her thumb before putting it up to her lips and giving it a kiss.

"i've missed you," she mumbled against your skin, causing goosebumps on your skin. she continued kissing along your hand, the other grabbing you by the waist and pulling you closer.

you gasped as her kisses were tracing up your arm, as she got closer to your shoulder, her other hand went down to your hip, pulling you on top of her lap, your hands instinctively find themselves on the back of her neck.

vi held back a moan at the feeling of your cunt on top of hers. her being drunk making it feel better than if she was sober.

"vi, you're- you're drunk-, we're drunk, we can't-" you breathlessly let out as you felt her lips trailing up your collarbone. your hands went up to her black locks, pulling it and making her look up at you.

"wanna taste you again," she muttered out, hands busying themselves with feeling you up again. her hands found your hips and your thighs, rubbing on them that had you tightening your legs around her thighs, “i don't care if i'm drunk or not. i mean- unless you do then i'll back off, but, i wanna make you feel good again."

oh she was down bad.

and you couldn’t deny you weren’t as you could feel a warmth growing between your legs, the alcohol making everything spin in a way that had you wanting her more.

you could feel your self control growing thin as you felt her thrusting up into you slightly, the one hand on your hip grounding you down a bit more making you bite your lip before you spoke. "vi, are you sure? i don't wanna make you do something while you're under the influence."

vi suddenly stood up, grabbing you by your ass, standing steadily as if to prove a point of her sobriety. you kicked your feet at the feeling of her touching you again with a slight smile finding it's way to your face.

you never thought you'd find yourself in her arms again, but here you were, tipsy in her arms.

she set you down and looked at you, caressing one side of your face. you melted in her hand, "i've never been more sure than anything. and honestly, i feel sober, i mean, look at you." you felt her eyes trailing down your body, the shorts showing off your legs to her.

her eyes went back up to meet your eyes, "completely up to you, pretty. you have my consent. if not it's totally okay. but..," she trailed off before slowly falling down on her knees, "if you're okay with it, lemme take those off for you."

you felt your breathing get a bit heavier as your heart thumped in your chest at the sight of vi on her knees in front of you, practically waiting to eat your pussy. it filled you with a sense of pride.

you stepped back and sat on her bed, crossing your legs with a smile, "then what're you waiting for?" she was practically running on her knees to you. her fingers hooking around the loops of your shorts, making you uncross your legs with a giggle at her desperation.

vi smiled at the sound of your laugh, her smile faltering and gaping wide open at the sight of you in your lacy underwear.

you caught it and gave a chuckle, "what? you like 'em, baby?" oh vi was going to cry in relief of you calling her that again.

you could sense her submitting to you as she timidly nodded her head. you leaned over to her and grabbed her hands, placing them on your thighs, "don't be shy now, c'mon, touch me.”

you felt her big hands graze your thighs and going up to your hips, messing with the fabric of your underwear. you could feel her sudden hesitation on what to do, suddenly feeling shy under your gaze, “what, baby? you want me to stand up?” you offered with a tilt of your head, grinning when you could see her getting shy.

oh you were enjoying this.

“mhm,” vi muttered, licking her lips as you stood before her, the alcohol seeming to diminish from your bloodstream at the adrenaline you were getting from this.

she took in your figure once more, as you had discarded your shirt in the midst of standing up. eyes shimmering at the sight of you again, “god, you’re just as beautiful as i remember.” you melted at her words, a smile itching on your face.

you watched as she got up on her knees and began leaving kisses on your stomach, making you reel your head back at the feeling of her lips on you.

you took the liberty of taking your bra off and throwing it into a random part of her room, and instantly putting one hand in her black hair. you brushed her hairs back, “wanna make me feel good again? is that it?” vi looked so good in your hands like this.

vi let out a slight whimper at the feeling of your hands in her hair, nodding her head at your question, “thought you were gonna take these off me, no?” you gave her a slight smile as she went back to kissing your stomach, her hands coming up to grip your breasts, giving them both a light squeeze before playing with your nipples.

“‘m nervous,” she admits, quietly. her voice muffled by her kisses leading down to your lower belly as she lowered herself on her knees more.

you let out a chuckle, your hands letting go of her hair before you shimmied off your panties, “if it makes you feel better, i’m definitely wet. your words earlier put a little scenario in my head. made me… remember a few things,” vi’s eyes widened at your boldness as she was now face to face with your pussy, face growing hot at what you could’ve been thinking of.

you lifted a leg and place it on her shoulder, pulling her in closer as she looked up at you through her lashes, “go on,” you licked your lips and nearly wanted to fall back as her fingers spread you slowly, watching as her head disappeared between your legs before you felt her hot breath on your cunt, making you let out a soft sigh.

your sigh turned into a whine as she started to very slowly lick up and down your pussy.

your eyes closed at the pleasure, “mm, fuck, baby,” and vi squeezed her thighs at the sight of you with a leg on her shoulder, face all screwed up in pleasure.

her other hand went behind the leg on her shoulder, grabbing a handful of your ass and pulling you closer as she began to lick and suck at your clit, making you cry out, “hah— ah, just like that, baby, ooh—“

you felt her tongue swirl down, causing her nose to bump into your clit as her tongue made its way down to your entrance, where she was teasing you slightly, enjoying the view of you clenching around nothing.

you began rocking your hips against her face, knees wanting to give out at the pleasure. she moaned against your pussy, causing vibrations that had your toes curling, “am i doing good?” she kneaded your ass, encouraging you and helping you move against her face.

you nearly want to fall back and just let her at it, “mm— fuck, yes, you’re doing so good violet, such a good girl f'me, aren't you?,” you emphasized your words by rocking more aggressively against her face as the the sounds became more obscene within the room.

violet could cum alone at the sight behold her. her tongue was lapping at your continuous flowing juices, slurping you up like you were last meal.

“mm, love this pussy so much. missed it so much, baby,” she mumbled against you. you moaned and grabbed her hair as she started to tease your entrance with her two thick fingers.

your eyes nearly rolled back as she very suddenly thrust her fingers in you, curling them immediately, her other hand pulling you closer by your ass, her tongue still lapping at your clit, the sounds of her slurping you up only made you wetter.

“i bet you did, look at you, doing so fucking good,” you began rocking your hips in coordination with her fingers inside you, wanting to feel her as deep as she could get.

your knees going weak when vi finds that gummy spot in your walls, very aggressively curling her fingers, watching as your hips spasmed against her tongue, “ooh— fuck, violet, right there, right there!” vi could sense your other leg going weak as it trembled.

she didn’t stop her movements as she used her shoulders to place your struggling leg on it, watching as you relaxed and laid back on the bed, moaning out at the new discovered angle — two legs on either shoulder with her going absolutely crazy in between your legs.

“god, vi, haa—“ you threw your head back as she started pumping her fingers in n out of you at a fast pace, the squelching making the tightness in your belly grow more and more.

“ooh, fuck, ‘m almost there, ‘m almost there, please—,” you could feel her smile, her tongue only lapping faster at your clit.

she stopped her assault on your puffy clit, fingers still pumping into you as her pace increased, enjoying the way you were moving your hips against her fingers.

“c’mon, pretty, cum all over my fingers,” you felt the knot in your belly winding up more as the warmth began spreading throughout your body, causing you to curl your toes at the feeling of her fingers working in you.

vi leaned down and began leaving kisses on your inner thighs, occasionally leaving little kitten licks on your pussy, pushing you to the edge as your legs tensed “right there, right there!”

your moan broke out into a silent scream as vi bit down on your inner thigh, driving you over the edge as your orgasm rippled throughout your body.

“haa— fffffuuckk, ooh, my god,” your legs tightened around her head, locking her in place as she suddenly started to lick on your clit again to ride you through your orgasm, making you ride her face throughout the spasms of please you felt, overstimulating yourself a bit as you shivered at the feeling.

vi could feel how wet she was in her own panties, grinning at the way you suddenly stopped moving, hands falling by your side as your chest heaved up and down.

your head poked up and gave her a smile, legs loosening around her neck as vi licked at her fingers, wiping her face as well.

and god she hopes this isn’t a dream.

cause if it wasn’t, she was surely crawling back to you.

[lovecla]

IF YOU LOVE ME, LET ME KNOW | jack hughes.

extra: she’s really empathetic, she’d make a great wife.

➴ chapter warnings: rumors, mentions of cheating.

➴ word count: 2.9k

💌 from me to you: and today i reached 600 followers. may or may not have cried. thank you so much. i hope you enjoy this one, and thank you anon for giving me this idea, i hope i met your expectations!

𖧷

𖧷

JACK BLINKED slowly, as if he wasn’t really sure if what he was seeing was actually real.

He sat up straight, resting his naked back against the wooden headboard, staring at the girl in front of him.

Sophia was resting against the glass door, wearing nothing but one of Jack’s old t-shirts that he doesn’t even recall putting inside his luggage, which can only mean she did it herself, something the singer’s often doing, wearing his clothes around, like she’s seeking for some kind of closeness that only he can provide.

She’s breathtaking, Jack remembers thinking. Even with no makeup on, even with puffy, tired eyes, and even with her hair slightly tangled from sleep, she’s breathtaking.

She’s not even doing anything important; she’s not singing, she’s not dancing, she’s not smiling for the thousands of cameras which are frequently shoved up her face. She’s simply existing, simply breathing, and that is enough to make Jack Hughes believe she’s the one for him.

He knows he is lucky. He knows she’s too good for him, and he knows that, one day, she’ll probably realize it, if she hasn’t already.

But, he also knows that as long as she lives, and maybe some time after that, he won’t ever love someone like he loves her. His heart won’t ever beat this fast for someone else, even if he wanted to.

Her laugh is enough to get him through his hardest days, her voice enough to bring him out of his dark thoughts. When he watches her on stage, dancing, singing, smiling and doing what she loves most, he’s certain that she’s enough to make him the happiest man alive.

So, that’s why they are where they are today. Because he can’t lose her. Not again, not ever.

He remembers feeling his heart dropping inside his chest when he read the article. "NHL Star Caught in Cheating Scandal: Sophia Montenegro and Jack Hughes Relationship in Turmoil".

Gladly, he had been one of the first to read the excruciating story. After that one incident where Sophia thought he was fucking his ex, Ava he thinks, his Google Alerts notifications for himself and Sophia are always on, and he doesn’t miss a single thing anymore.

That’s why he almost crushes his phone inside his hands when he reads the article, over and over again, memorizing the nasty, evil words plastered for everyone to see.

There’s a picture, too. A blurry, probably edited one, showing his face beside a random girl’s he doesn’t even know. His name is beside the word “cheater”, “unfaithful” and he’s being compared with that one asshole named Harris Dickinson.

He wants to kill someone.

It’s late at night, and he is away. Sophia is back in Newark at their shared apartment, and he knows she’s probably asleep by now. He won’t get home until later that night, and he’s seriously considering murdering whoever thought that coming up with this lie, now out of all times, would be a great idea.

She’s not answering her phone, as expected, and Jack Hughes wants to scream. He just had a shitty game, they lost 4-1, even after he shot the puck at the net twenty-three times alone— not even one earned him the glorious “goal honk”.

He spends the entire ride silent, because he knows his teammates have already seen the article. He can feel their eyes on him, and he can sense their pity too. Even Luke, who always chooses to stay quiet and watch from afar, is looking at him with worried, hooded eyes.

“I didn’t do it.” Jack mumbles, looking through the window and watching the dark sky above them.

“I know,” Luke hums, sounding upset. “That’s why I am worried.”

“They can’t fucking leave us alone,” Jack hisses, his frustrated tone echoing through the silent bus. “Do they have any idea what this does to Soph? Do they have any idea how fucking messed up this is?”

“She’s a tough girl,” Luke tries. “She’ll get over this.”

“What if,” Jack stops himself. No. Sophia will hear him out, she won’t shut him out like she did last time. This isn’t the first dating scandal they have to deal with, and it certainly will not be the last. “Fuck.”

“I know nothing I say will help but,” Luke sighs, then turns his head around until he’s facing his brother. “I’m here, we’re here. I love you.”

Jack blinks, nodding once. “I know. It helps.”

He arrives at their home at three forty-nine that night. He opens the door and closes it in record time, and he doesn’t even think twice before running to their bedroom, desperate to see if Sophia had run away and desperate to see if he’d find their bed empty.

He doesn’t, though. Sophia’s there, just not like he expected her to be, asleep. No. She’s sitting on top of the covers, resting her back against the headboard, eyes glued to the TV in front of her, some random show Jack didn’t even bother acknowledging playing in the back, muted.

“Baby.”

Her eyes are tired when she looks at him, and he hates it. Hates it because he knows she isn’t tired because she spent the night doing what she loves— she’s tired because she’s thinking nonstop, and she’s not well.

“Jack.”

“You’re not asleep.” He stated, standing in front of her, looking for something he wasn’t really sure of in her face. He didn’t find it.

She smiles, tiredly, tilting her head to the side. “Had this bad feeling on my chest, like something I didn’t even know what was about to blow up in my face.”

“I didn’t do it,” he blurts out. He’s panting and he knows he probably looks awful, but he doesn’t care. “Soph, listen to me. I didn’t d—”

“I know,” she softened her tone, patting the seat beside her, on Jack’s side of the bed. He immediately complies, sitting beside the woman he’d buy the moon for if she asked to. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I know your heart, Jack.”

“Soph…”

“I know you,” she gulps, looking at something on his face, as she raises her hand and rests it against his chest. “I know you’re not him.”

“I fucking love you, Soph,” he says, and he can’t believe he’s on the verge of tears. Jack Hughes, the sassy, though player, is on the verge of crying because he can’t stomach the thought of losing his girlfriend. “I’d give you my life if you asked me to. You know that.”

“I don’t want you to,” she smiles, softly, her eyes filled with tears too. “Where’s the fun in that? I want you by my side, every day. I want people to write your name on my biography when I die, and I want people to know that you’re it for me.”

“I’m going to kill whoever wrote that,” he promises. “I know I can find them, and I know I can make them pay for what they did, I just know that,” he’s seeing red, and he’s ready to punch someone in the face when Sophia kisses him, sweet, honeyed lips touching each other.

“Let’s make the most out of this,” she whispers. “This time, let’s just see the glass half full.”

Making the most out of that awful situation turned out to be spending a week at Calilo, a private, five star hotel in Ios, a Greek island.

The room they chose had a private pool, and a private entrance to the beach, which they were in love with. Sophia cried when they opened the hotel’s room door because of course she did, and Jack took a picture of her there to send to the family group chat, before turning his wifi off, something he promised he’d do once they arrived at their destination.

For seven days, one hundred and sixty-eight hours, ten thousand and eight minutes, six hundred four thousand, eight hundred seconds, they weren’t going to be the famous singer and Hockey player, Sophia Montenegro and Jack Hughes.

No. They’d be Sophia and Jack, a normal couple living a normal life.

“We could be royalty, king and queen of nowhere,” Sophia sings, voice smooth and quiet, yet enough to make Jack want to jump out of bed and kiss her senseless. “Lose it all, everything. As long as we got you and I, you and me, they can tear this whole house down. All we have is love.”

“Did I die and go to Heaven?” Jack mumbles, and smiles as Sophia turns around and faces him. He barely tries to hide the way he scans her body with hungry eyes, lingering over the outline of her boobs for longer than he probably should.

“Some people do say I’m an angel,” she blinks innocently, and walks towards the bed, sitting on Jack’s lap, gracefully putting her legs on each side of Jack’s body. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a girl who just got knocked up.” He smirks, and Sophia laughs, throwing her head back as Jack holds her in place with his hands on her waist, carefully arranging her on top of him.

“We’ll have to work on this newly developed kink of yours…” she winks.

“Like it isn’t your fault,” he rolls his eyes, playfully, staring at the outline of her panties sitting right on top of his own boxers. “Making a song about wanting to get knocked up. Singing said song in front of thousands of people. Asking me to fuck you in unthinkable positions just so you could do them on stage.”

“I mean…” she smirks. “I gotta keep my fans interested, right? And what are boyfriends for if not for helping their girlfriends out?”

“You’re unreal, Sophia Montenegro,” Jack says, leaning forward and kissing the singer fervently. She tastes sweet, she tastes like his favorite person in the world.

But maybe that’s just because that’s what she is.

𖧷

SOPHIA HAD already forgotten how good it was to live a normal life.

She loves her fans, she really does. She also loves to sing, and she loves to be this huge pop star people say she is, but also loves to be human. She loves to walk around without thousands of people taking pictures of her and analyzing everything she does. She loves to eat a silent dinner by herself or with her friends and family and not have several cameras in her face.

When Jack suggested, after that terrible article, that they should travel somewhere quiet and safe, she thought he was just kidding. It was June, he was technically off his NHL player duties, and she did have some time before she had to headline festivals and make appearances in TV shows so it made sense for them to take some time for themselves, but they had never done that before— why, she doesn’t know, but now she realizes how dumb they had both been.

Ios was a small island, and the few people who were there didn’t know who they were. They walked around with their hands together without anyone batting an eye at them, and even when they asked for people to take pictures of them together, no one hit them with the usual “oh my God, are you that one singer and that one player?”

People treated them normally, and she couldn’t be happier. The past few weeks had been like hell, living on the edge and worrying that something would break them apart, but now?

Now, they were walking together after eating Chicken Gyros and Bubble Waffles with chocolate ice cream (“That’s too sweet, baby, it’s disgusting.”, “You’re disgusting, Rowdy.”), making their way to the private beach in front of their bedroom, which Sophia promptly said it belonged to them from now on.

She spent the entire walk singing, because Jack had asked her to. The lyrics of I Have A Dream slipped out of her mouth like syrup, each sentence sweeter than the previous one. Jack, who has been holding her hand and watching her the entire time, smiled and felt his hands getting sweaty.

“I have a dream, a song to sing. To help me cope with anything, if you see the wonder of a fairy tale, you can take the future even if you fail. I believe in angels.”

She loved this song, it had been one of the many who inspired her to be a singer. And to get to sing it in Greece, while holding hands with the person she’s sure to be the love of her life?

She won.

Her white sundress contrasted perfectly with the sunset in the background, and when she and Jack decided that they wanted to sit by the sea, the sun was already saying its last words.

“It’s beautiful.” She sighs, content.

“It is, yeah,” Jack answers, but when she turns around, he’s not looking at the view, he’s looking at her.

She laughs, smacking his chest. “Did you just call me ‘it’?”

“I don’t know, man, I heard the word beautiful and thought we were talking about you.” He cheesily answers, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“You’re actually so annoying,” Sophia chuckles, moving the sand around with her feet. “I don’t know how I’ve been handling your ass for almost five years.”

Jack stays silent for a while, something that isn’t like him at all, but Sophia doesn’t ask anything. He’s been like that since that one article, and even though she can tell it still bothers him, she promised him she wouldn’t ask any more questions.

It was upsetting, to say the least, to know that people were constantly praying for their downfall. At least once every two months they would come up with a new genius idea of how they weren’t together anymore, and how they hated each other, and how Jack was a freaking cheater and how Sophia was a homewrecker.

She understands that they may not look like the perfect match— who would’ve thought? The bratty, Mr. I-hate-media-attention dating the singer whose name is practically in every headline and whose face is in almost every magazine cover, not to mention her songs always doing numbers in the charts.

But they are happy.

So, so happy.

“I don’t think I want to leave,” Sophia whispers, listening to the sounds of the waves in front of them. Her head is resting on Jack’s shoulder, and he has his left hand wrapped around her thigh. “Like, ever.”

Jack hums. “Not even to make concerts?”

“Well. Maybe,” she sounds childish and Jack smiles. “I wish I could have all of that with all of this. You know what I mean? This peace, their love. Is it weird?”

“Not really, baby. A bit confusing, though.” He kisses her temple, and she chuckles.

“I’ve been in the spotlight for half of my life. Ever since I’ve decided that I wanted to be famous, I’ve been watched like some kind of wild animal,” she whispers, voice filled with emotion. “I love what I do. But… I also love who I am when I’m not performing. When I’m not Sophia Montenegro. I like it when I’m just… yours, for example.”

“Soph—”

“I’m sorry if it sounds confusing…” she pouts, and Jack smirks.

“Do you like being mine?” He asks, and she rolls her eyes at him, annoyed by the obvious question.

“You already know the answer to that,” she says. “Of course I do.”

“Would you like to be mine for the rest of our lives?” He lowers his voice, and Sophia furrows her eyebrows, lifting her head up and staring at the man sitting beside her.

“I mean I would but…” she watches his face. He looks beautiful, she thinks. His eyes match the sea. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I want to know if you’d say yes.” He simply says. Sophia notices he’s shaking, though.

“If I’d say yes to what?” She answers, but she can feel her heart racing inside her chest already.

“To be my wife,” he finally says, pulling a black, velvet box out of his jeans pocket, and opening at the same time her first tears start to roll down her cheeks. “I also love who you are when you’re not performing, but I love it even more when you’re just mine. So, please, Soph, tell me—”

“Jack—” she gasps, putting her hand in front of her mouth.

“Will you marry me? Will you make me the happiest man alive and let me make you my wife?” He asks, blue eyes full of expectations and hope.

Sophia laughs wetly before throwing herself in front of her boyfriend— fiancé—, kissing him messily, just because she can. And because she wants him to feel the turmoil going on inside her, and what he did to her.

How he found her, a garden with no flowers— and then he bought the seeds, planted and watered them, and how he’s now watching them grow and bloom. How he delicately took care of each one of them, and how he’d kiss them gently before going away.

“This could go very wrong,” she says, voice trembling as Jack puts the ring, a very fancy one she notices, on her finger. “You could get tired of me. And you could realize I’m not that cool—”

“Soph, forget it,” Jack laughs. “I’m not letting you go anytime soon. So either you start getting used to being called Sophia Montenegro Hughes now or you’ll have a very hard time.”

“I fucking love you.” She sobs, rolling her wet eyes at him.

“Always so romantic, my postar,” he kisses her cheeks, wiping her tears with his lips. “I happen to fucking love you too.”

𖧷

sophiamontenegro

Ios, Greece

liked by morgan.grace, tyla, elblue6 and 3,902,012 others

sophiamontenegro that feeling when you’re sooo empathetic he had no other option but to make you his wife 💌 that’s that me engaged i guess

View all 9,103 comments

user1 SOPHIA I FUCKING LOVE YOU

user2 HARD LAUNCHING YOUR ENGAGEMENT WHEN PEOPLE SPEND THE ENTIRE MONTH TALKING ABOUT YOUR “BREAK UP” WHAT A QUEEN

trevorzegras That feeling when you have knee surgery tomorrow :/

sophiamontenegro trevorzegras 👍🏻

morgan.grace YOU BETTER CALL ME RIGHT FUCKING NOW SOPHIA WHAT THE HELL

sophiamontenegro morgan.grace on it baby 🫡

user3 THE CAPTION

user4 ngl i thought they wouldn’t last a week but look at them 4 years later getting married

user5 soph you better live stream your wedding pls

jackhughes 😈

user6 we survived another “jack and sophia broke up” moment let’s GOOOOO

user7 album when

𖧷

jackhughes

liked by lhughes_06, njdevils, curtislazar95 and 293,928 others

jackhughes

View all 2,892 comments

lhughes_06 👍🏻

user0 lhughes_06 average hughes brothers reaction

user1 It’s okay Jack we know how overwhelming choosing a caption talking about your engagement with the world’s most famous pop singer can be…

user2 THE SCREENSHOT LMFAO HE DID SOPH DIRTY

sophiamontenegro delete that or i’m asking for a divorce

jackhughes sophiamontenegro we’re not even married yet ?

nicohischier Congrats Jack and Soph ❤️

_quinnhughes congrats!! love ya

elblue6 🥹

subbanator HELL YEAAAAH

trevorzegras Can’t wait until the priest says speak now or forever hold your peace and I get up 😌

jackhughes trevorzegras you’re not even invited

trevorzegras jackhughes 🙁

user3 didn’t know yall were locked in like that

user4 my sister just started screaming and crying 😂

user5 Mama and Papa 💜

user6 THE CONTACT NAME NOOOO

[harmonysanreads]

I KNOW WE HAVEN’T KNOWN ANYTHING ABOUT PHAINON YET (except for that cute face and yummy booba) AND I ALREADY HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT HIM.

Okay okay imagine Yandere! Phainon who loves you and cherishes your existence too much to the brink of obsession (can you blame him?). Him, being a perfect man himself still thinks that he lacks something, and that something is your devotion, your unyielding love because he deserves it, right? He deserves to have your attention and your affection after everything he has done for you.

Oh no, dear Phainon is definitely not a selfish man, he just needs your love to complete himself, to have someone that he could return to after a hard day.

That’s why I think this man will definitely love bombing you. Gifts, kisses, cuddles? Everything you want, everything you ask for. And even if you don’t even need it, he still offers it to you like the desperate puppy he is. He will spoil you rotten, and I mean it in the most respectful way. He found your smallest quirks adorable even if it’s not that special in your eyes. He reminds you to stay dehydrated and go to sleep early, he even tells you to eat healthy. That’s why after knowing him, you have never skipped another meal. And he will definitely coo softly to you whenever you feel insecure about yourself. That’s why you need him, that’s why you should rely on him. And the only thing Phainon ask for as a payback is your love, love him like the way he does to you. Please please because you’re his pretty girl and he loves you too much to even think that this is not a mutual feeling.

Can you really say no to him? To that adorable face and those sparkling blue eyes that seem to go lovesick everytime they catch a glimpse of you?

It was the fifth time this month, or was it the sixth? You couldn't be bothered to keep count anymore, the absurdity of the situation pushing you closer to questioning reality.

“You do know that it's illegal to break into a person's house?” you manage to croak out, senses strained by sickness.

“Break into your house?” he pulls out a chair to sit, the bowl of whatever he'd brought with him finding its place on the table beside your bed.

The near-dumbfounded edge to his question makes you deadpan, “You're so humorous, even when you're sick. How is it trespassing when we're in love with each other?”

You feel your fingers clutching onto your bedsheets, did he even hear you? Can he hear himself? To that, your conscience answers with a firm no. He'll only acknowledge what will suit his fancy, anything else is but you being in a ‘phase of denial’.

“I am not in love with you, how many times do I need to reiterate?” you stress, watching the twirl of the spoon as he stirs the contents in the bowl.

“Hush, I know you're just moody I didn't arrive sooner. I read it on that book you had on you on last Saturday. This is the part where I'm supposed to apologize and hold my ears, right—”

You release a heavy sigh.

You could not decide what begged the most concern : the fact that he doesn't see the problem in his behavior or how accustomed to it that you're getting.

A warm touch on your forehead startles you, another firmer grip on your arm stops you from moving away, “How are you still so energetic with this high a fever?” the candle atop the table flickers, a frown blemishes his face.

He leans in, you respond by increasing the distance. “I took medicine earlier.” you mutter, suddenly feeling like a guilty child.

“Did you? Good girl.” you don't need to look at him to picture the shine clinging at the corners of his lips. You shouldn't look at him for it'll reveal the barely held back cringe spreading across your face.

You're about to protest but a wave of dizziness halts you. Phainon notices the change, you find yourself wishing he wasn't so observant.

“But you haven't eaten, have you?” his hands act too familiar, too comfortable in touching you. You're forced to inhale as he cups your face in inspection, pretending it's for work — but you know, his greed extends too far for it to be anything but an excuse.

“I did eat.” you try to assert, he remains unconvinced.

“Are you still mad at me? If so, say it, I can apologize however you'd prefer. But please don't lie to me about matters that concern your health.” a squeeze to your cheeks, shadows fall on him.

You almost want to laugh at the worry in his eyes, at the way he behaves so much like a perfect lover. If you hadn't known better, the haze clouding your sense would've made you believe him, buy that he's being sincere.

Unfortunately for him and fortunately for you, you're just a bit more distrustful than others, just a bit more cautious than he's giving you credit for — a bit too lucid to have faith in his ‘love’ narrative.

You purse your lips, you are mad at him ; just not in the way he's deluding himself to be. As you contemplate whether to snap at him or not, he releases his grip on you in favor of scooping a spoon of the contents in the bowl, ending his path before your lips.

You turn you head away, a clear rejection. You expect him to probe again but his sigh catches you off-guard.

His finger wraps around a lock of your hair, yearning stains his eyes. “This would've never happened if you just accepted to be mine.”

You soak in his words for a second. Your left eye twitches as you realize, he completely ignored every previous piece of dialogue for his agenda.

“In your dreams.” petulance coats the statement.

To your horror, Phainon easily brings the lock of your hair to his lips, his smile widening as if he's got you exactly where he desires.

“How did you know? I do dream of you, everyday.” sparkles float around the air of his face.

You find yourself grasping at straws, how does one wake up a man who pretends to sleep? A voice in your interjects, perhaps it is for the best you cease these attempts altogether?

“Now, won't you continue to be a sweet girl and eat up?” his words are honey, his smile is blinding and oh so dreadfully, there is adoration in his face, in his every step.

It has alarm bells ringing in your head, because it doesn't make sense.

“No.” you sharply deny, pushing the spoon away again.

“Why not?” you notice just at the nick of time, there is an edge to his voice this time. A crack forming in that perfect face.

“Because I don't trust you. What if you mixed something weird in it?” that is an understatement, your distrust for the man stretches further than the food he offers.

The elders always say, if something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. ‘Love’ is not reason enough for you to believe Phainon's apparent devotion, his benevolence. No man would squander his time and resources only to back it up with such an easy reasoning — at least, not a man like him. Even if he says it till your ears bleed — you will not believe him.

The Chrysos Heir's hum interrupts the silence, “Then, if I do this...”

Your quizzical gaze falls on him, he holds your stare and you feel a kick at your ribcage. Struggling is useless, but you try anyway ; if just to be petty, if just to drive your point across, if just to survive. He squashes your attempt with an insultingly easy grip, showing you exactly how futile it is.

His thumb parts your lips with an insistent press, joining his pointer finger in holding your mouth open next. Your nails scratch at his glove in a pitiful attempt at getting him away, his free hand holds them both captive.

His parted lips shrinking the distance is the last thing you see, before you close your eyes shut. You would breathe if your lungs hadn't given up, the increase of strength in Phainon's grip seizes you with fear, makes it feel as though your blood froze with dread. Your instincts stop kicking, accepting its place in the serpent's jaw.

You feel a sharp kick of spice on your tongue, washing through your parched throat. A force has you closing your mouth, holding it in place until the content has been swallowed.

You heave as if you reached the surface from an arduous dive at last, mind working overtime, trying to process what just took place.

A clink of the spoon as it's placed on the bowl startles you, Phainon closes his eyes, a smile nearly splits his face in two.

“That's more like it. See, it was delicious and perfectly free of questionable substances, no?”

Phainon's smile breaks into a chuckle at the astonished look on your face, you feel a twist somewhere inside at the way derision drips from its tune. But before you can observe further, you feel a swipe of his finger on your lower lip. You make the mistake of glancing at him and he utilizes your mishap to make a show of licking the residue from your lips clean.

If you were skeptical about it before, you are certain now — this man will be your doom.

SIKE.

[muletia]

I know you mentioned on your OP+Megs+Ratchet ask adding in one or both of the scouts, but I can't help but imagine the sheer unparalleled comedy(ish) of the Autobots watching their entire high command (aka OP, Ratchet and Ultra Magnus, of all mecha) go gaga over some poor human. I think the other Autobots would be taking the human out for a spin if only so they can get a breather from everything. (I think Wheeljack would do it more/most often specifically because he knows it'll piss Ultra Magnus off.)

I also have the idea of Ultra Magnus almost being a stop gap for the other two's behavior for one reason or another (at least until he finds out that Megs is gunning for the human too).

Your ideas are excellent either way though👌

this is the post anon is referring to

never been a huge magnus fan in the show but I adore this concept!

To be honest, obsessed!Ultra Magnus would be the most exhausting to be around — and above all, the most tedious — of the entire Autobot Trinity, due to his pedantry and ironclad adherence to rules that weigh heavily on you as well. He’s intense, always keeping a vigilant optic on you, monitoring your every move to ensure you don’t accidentally hurt yourself. After all, the native life forms of this planet are especially fragile and must be protected 24/7, right? So, Ultra Magnus approaches Optimus for permission to take you under his care. To protect you from the Decepticons, of course. It’s not because his little fascination with you is slowly evolving into something deeper — a bond compelling him to stay close to you.

And Optimus agrees because he trusts Magnus and knows you’re in good hands, as he constantly worries about you himself.

The problem is that Magnus’s company is suffocating. Want to leave the base to get some fresh air, have a smoke, or just take a moment for yourself? The SIC of the Autobots is always a step behind, firmly reminding you that you can’t leave the hangar without Optimus’s permission. Don’t make him resort to bringing you back by force.

You can’t even hide in the base, find a quiet corner, and do your own thing, because one of them is always watching. Most often, it’s Ultra Magnus, who immediately gives you a lecture about staying within their line of sight—so you don’t accidentally get stepped on. It’s just an excuse, of course; Magnus simply has a stick so far up his aft that he can’t just admit he loves your company and feels strangely anxious and lost when you’re not around.

His microscopic knowledge of humans will also cause you countless headaches. All it takes is a sneeze, and Ultra Magnus is already dragging you to Ratchet, convinced you’re dying. And Ratchet takes your health matters very seriously, so you end up spending several minutes in the medbay, undergoing a thorough checkup. All the while, you are subjected to the medic’s grumbling about taking better care of yourself, under the intense gaze of the SIC of the Autobots, who’s tracking your every move and patiently waiting for the verdict.

The worst, however, is when you find yourself with the entire Holy Trinity in the base. None of them will ask you outright, “How was your day?” but everyone is dying to listen. This leads to a scenario where the Autobot elite huddles around you, hearts practically glowing in their optics, as you talk about workplace gossip or your current hobbies. The rest of the world ceases to exist for them. If the team wants their competent high command back, they have no choice but to pry them away from you.

Enter Wheeljack, who will occasionally whisk you away for private flying sessions in his ship, giving you a much-needed break. I think Arcee would take you for a ride a few times as well, unable to bear the sight of her superiors practically drooling over you. The long and detailed scolding they’ll receive from Magnus upon your return is another matter…

The SIC of the Autobots will immediately scoop you up into his servos before you can take another step and carry you straight back to Ratchet and Optimus, who can never get enough of your presence.

[guiltyasdave]

epiphany

pairing: Frankie Morales x f!reader

word count: ~2.8k

tags/warnings: angst, descriptions of injuries, fluff, able-bodied reader, no use of y/n

summary: after a helicopter crash, frankie wakes up in a strange place.

a/n: once again i apologize for the pain i'm about to inflict on you. this was written for @almostfoxglove's angst challenge which i'm so so soooo late for (i'm sorry freya!) and this was originally @sizzlingcloudmentality's prompt/moodboard, but we were both going through the worst writer's block of our lives and thought switching might help (it did not), so the first thousand beautiful words are hers! <3 also thank you for beta reading and for all the yap sessions about this one in particular my love!

for an extra sad experience, listen to epiphany by taylor swift while reading :)

dividers by @saradika-graphics <3

notifications blog -> @guiltyasdavenotifs & full masterlist -> here

It is all noise, deafening noise, roaring rotors, beeping instruments, flickering lights, blinking warnings, screaming metal, screaming people, his own voice, so loud it made his ears ring. Then he saw it. Again. His mom, cradling him, his dad, telling him he was a good boy, Juan, his first cat, curled up in his lap. Friends, his brothers, most of them dead now, rotting in graves, the women he loved. His baby momma. His child, smiling up at him, tiny, fat hands grabbing into the air. Fuck, his life was flashing before his eyes. Again. How often would he have to see this, all his good moments and why were there bad moments, too?

A massive jolt goes through the helicopter as he hits the ground and now the smell of copper, fuel and earth fills his nostrils. Wet, dark, quiet earth. The smell of a grave. The beeping and whimpering blurs into one soundscape, a wave of sounds on which Frankie slips away as his eyes close shut. Dark, quiet earth. Like a grave.

A sheep. Or more than one? They bleat. They coax him out of his unconsciousness, every sound a beacon for his mind to find his way back into consciousness. Out of the dark peacefulness, back into the light. Frankie groans, everything hurts, not only his body, his whole existence hurts, feels broken and ripped. The sunlight cuts through between his eyelids, blinding him, but that is what he wants, the light. He needs the light.

He shields his eyes and finds himself in a meadow. Poppies, cornflowers, grass. Wet, rich earth under his palm as he tries to push himself up. The buzzing of insects. And the bleating sheep. He finds himself in a dream of cottage life. Then he turns his head and sees the helicopter, the carcass of the metal beast he tried to fly too close to the sun. Like Icarus he came crashing down.

He doesn’t have to check, he knows “a fatal crash with zero survivors” when he sees one. Frankie got lucky, again. Somehow death spared him, he always does. Maybe the old fella took a liking in watching Frankie fuck up his life over and over again. 

Military training kicks in, he checks himself for injuries and finds no major ones. Maybe a broken rib or two, a concussion for sure. He grunts and pushes himself onto his knees, crying out in pain that he doesn’t even know where it’s coming from. 

A furry head appears out of the tall grass, white curls, pink nose, floppy ears, black and vigilant eyes. The snout opens and a bleat comes out. Like a complaint for this human being. To better not disturb the peace in this meadow any further with his mediocrity of surviving yet another accident that should have killed him.

“Sorry,” Frankie mutters and finds the energy to rise to his feet. Shaky, wobbly, the scent of earth and grass clinging to his damp clothes and skin. “You know somewhere for me to find help?”

Another bleat, then the sheep turns and starts wading through the tall grass with all the time in the world. Frankie watches the little bum disappear between green blades dotted with red poppies. He might as well follow the animal. Perhaps he will find a shepherd this way. Or a good shepherd may find him. God knows Frankie is in desperate need of some guidance. Or at least medical attention.

So he starts walking, more limping than anything else, his boots cutting a swath through the grass and flowers, every step causing mayhem for bees and bugs. The sheep, a few steps ahead of Frankie, sways through the meadow like a ship through green waves. It doesn’t turn around once, doesn’t turn towards its herd, the animal simply follows an invisible path that Frankie can’t see. Maybe he is losing it now, following an animal after having a fatal crash like it was his guide. But he had done weirder things in his life. Maybe he had hit his head really hard on the ground when he got thrown out of the helicopter. 

His head hurts, his legs hurt, breathing hurts as well, but the scent of summer and peace fills his hurting lungs and every breath soothes the stinging and rippling in his chest.

It takes some time, but finally, after hobbling behind the sheep, the meadow opens into a clearing, a gravel pathway starting to show and leading to a cottage. A small house with walls made out of stones, big and small, various shades and colors, a crooked roof, ducking under some trees as if it was hiding from the eyes of anyone who was not welcome. The birdsong sounds different now, too. 

Another bleat and the sheep starts trotting towards the house, the front door open wide. Silence. There is no sound to be heard, no voices, no music playing, no banging of pots and pans. Just birds, humming insects, the sheep drinking water from a bowl. Peace, comes to Frankie’s mind as if someone had seeded the word into his brain.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there, on a creaky bench in front of the house, basking in the last warm rays of the sun before it hides behind the trees. Ten minutes maybe, or an hour. His thoughts were flowing molasse thick behind his forehead. Thoughts about the crash, thoughts about the lives he has on his list, thoughts about who might miss him if he disappeared for good this time. 

His eyes flutter shut. The sunlight is warm on his skin, painting the darkness behind his eyelids orange. It’s like he’s floating away, on his way to the sun once more.

“Francisco?” 

Your voice is soft, almost as if the wind had whispered his name. He opens his eyes, turns his back on the painless bliss of unconsciousness once more.

Rays of the setting sun frame you where you’re standing in front of him, giving you a warm glow, illuminating the flowing fabric of the dress that you’re wearing. He doesn’t question how you know his name, how you feel familiar even though he’s certain that he’s never seen you before. He must have hit his head really hard.

“I— I crashed,” he croaks, his voice hoarse and the words scraping his throat on their way out. 

His hand vaguely gestures in the direction he came from, but he can’t see the helicopter anymore, no sign of the crash either, only seemingly endless fields of grass and wildflowers, with trees in the distance. How far did he walk? 

You nod, seemingly unsurprised. The sheep that led him there nudges your hand with its snout and you scratch through the wool around its ears, muttering what sounds like thank you. It bleats at him once more, before finally trotting back to its herd, blending into the white dots among the green. 

You pick up the wooden basket you had been carrying and tip your head towards the open door. Your eyes had been trained on his face, but when he stands up on unsteady legs, they trail down his frame, lingering on his side where blood has been seeping through his shirt and the stained fabric is clinging to his skin uncomfortably. He barely registered the pain while he was sitting there, but now, it grows to full intensity. Maybe it’s more than a concussion and a cracked rib after all. 

He follows you over the threshold, taking in his surroundings. The stony walls, littered with mismatched wooden shelves, filled with books and flowerpots. Small windows through which the evening light is filtering in. Worn down furniture, cushions that he would love to sink his tired body into right now. An earthy, heavy scent, cleansing his mind and his lungs. 

For the first time in years, there’s no underlying need for the artificial high that has kept his head over water and simultaneously pulled him under. 

“We need to clean you up,” you say, eyeing his bloody shirt again. 

You lead him up a wooden staircase, creaks accompanying his every step, and into a small bathroom. The light from a round window reflects off forest green tiles, mesmerizing him. You fill up a bathtub, adding oils from little glass bottles, until a herbal scent is wafting around him. 

Carefully, you help him strip off his clothes down to his underwear. Lifting his arms hurts like hell and he sucks in a harsh breath when his shirt unsticks from the open wound on his left. Some of the pain eases as soon as he sinks down into the warm water, a grateful sigh falling from his lips. You smile at that, a small, timid thing, and he wants to keep looking at you, wants to make you smile again, but you settle on the stone floor at his back, pushing down on his shoulders until most of his body is submerged. 

With a cloth, you start on his face, cleaning off mud and dried blood, so gently that it barely stings when you touch scratches on his skin. You move on to his hair, letting him lean back, your fingers massaging over his scalp, easing the tension, the worry that he’s carrying around with him. Finally, you probe at his rips under the water’s surface, fingertips dancing over the open wound there. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it feels less heavy, less biting somehow. 

Your hands trace over the scars littering his torso in gentle touches, soothing phantom pains that have long passed. “I’m sorry about these,” he thinks he hears you say, so quietly that he’s not sure if the words were meant for him to understand. 

“‘s not your fault,” he murmurs, his eyelids drooping shut once more as he sinks deeper into the warm water. 

He awakens surrounded by soft white bedding, a wooden ceiling with exposed beams over his head and the light of early sunrise falling into the room, painting it golden. He stretches without thinking, only a sting at his ribcage reminding him of the day before. 

It all feels like he’s walking through a dream, one too beautiful to disturb. So, he doesn’t wonder how he came here, who you are, why you seem to know him, how you seemingly healed most of his injuries simply by giving him a bath. If this is what an actual dream feels like, not the nightmares he usually has, he doesn’t want to wake up. 

Everything feels easy, here, with you. There don’t seem to be any clocks in the cottage, so he has no idea what time it is, but it must be early morning. Still, he finds you in a small garden behind the house, tending to vegetables that you’re growing there. 

He feels your gaze flying over him, like you’re checking what state he’s in. Then, with a smile, you start explaining what you’re doing. Which plants to water, which vegetables are ready to be harvested. He works alongside you, naturally, like he’s always done this. It feels good, using his hands and body like this. Growing something, helping someone, doing good. 

He follows you to the small kitchen, watches you prepare things, storing them in a pantry. You explain which herbs you are growing in small pots on a windowsill, handing them to him one by one to let him smell them. 

The sun is rising higher, warming the air floating in through the open backdoor. You take his hand and pull him outside again, walking down an invisible path through the green fields surrounding the cottage. Bees are buzzing in the wildflowers around you and the sheep are bleating occasionally, watching the two of you with curious eyes, but not coming closer to investigate. 

You’re wearing a dress again, the skirt flowing around your ankles in the light breeze and the sunlight illuminating your figure as you skip a few steps ahead of him. Frankie can’t help himself, picking a few of the flowers and handing them to you. His heart almost cracks at your wide smile when he gives them to you, your fingertips grazing his. 

Back at the cottage, you put them into a vase on the kitchen counter, the flowery scent mixing with the house’s earthy notes in no time. It’s a small thing, but in a way, it's a trace of his presence here. It’s almost scary how much Frankie likes that thought.

It becomes a routine, as easy as breathing. The two of you taking care of the garden first thing in the morning, then a walk through the fields. The sheep start coming closer, even though they don’t let him pet them the way they do with you. He barely hurts anymore, the wound at his side almost completely healed. 

In the evenings, you make tea from the herbs that you’re growing. Frankie has never liked tea, always proud to be a black coffee guy, but this one is different. It calms him, slows his thoughts down and fills him with a peace he didn’t know life had to offer. And it’s something that you made. For him, to care for him. 

One night, you’re both sitting in front of the fireplace, watching the flames and listening to them crackling. He starts telling you about his past, about all the regrets that haunt him. About the men that he’s killed, about all the pain and sadness that he’s responsible for. About the woman and child that he abandoned, all to chase a high that he knew was unreachable. 

He feels lighter, afterwards, like a shadow has lifted from his heart. You take his hand and rest it on your thigh. Your fingertip dances over his open palm, drawing delicate shapes over the calloused lines of his skin. 

“All the violence it took you to become this gentle,” you sigh. 

Your smile is sad, and he wants to kiss it off your lips. He’s never felt gentle one day in his life, has always been made of brute force and rough edges, but here, with you, he thinks you might be right.

With every passing day, the peace seeps deeper into his bones. Maybe it’s not a dream. Maybe everything that happened before was the dream, a nightmare, and he finally woke up.

That evening, you’re singing while preparing dinner. He puts down his knife and the potatoes he’s been chopping and takes your hand instead. You grin at him, still singing as he sways the both of you around to the melody. His heart aches at the sound of your laugh. 

He pulls you closer, leaning in, eyes darting to your lips. For a second, he could swear that you’re moving towards him too. Then you sigh, one hand coming up to rest on his chest, stopping him. He freezes. 

“Frankie, you— We can’t. You can’t stay here” 

Suddenly, his whole body feels cold.

“Why not? I want to be here. With you.” 

Under other circumstances, he’d be ashamed of the whine in his voice. 

“Your time hasn’t come yet.”

“What do you mean, my time hasn’t—” 

Tears well up in your eyes. Your teeth dig into your bottom lip. 

“I’ve already kept you longer than I should have. I’m sorry, Frankie. You have more life to live. I’ll protect you, just like I have before.”

Before he can say another word, before he can even attempt to understand, your arms wrap around him. Your lips sink down onto his, just as soft as he imagined, just as sweet. 

Then, everything dissolves. The stone walls around him, the setting sun through the window, the scent of herbs and fresh flowers. It leaves only the feel of your warm body, your lips on his. Until that disappears, too.

His eyes fly open, seeing nothing at first. Sound erupts around him like an explosion. Blurry shapes move in his periphery. The air is thick with smoke, his ears are ringing. His mouth tastes of blood. Hands are frantically pulling at him, moving him, shouting at him, around him, in words that he can’t make out. 

It’s like he’s watching, barely present in his body as someone feels his wrist for a pulse, shines a light into his eyes, checks his body for injuries. He doesn’t understand. He was good, he was healing. He was at peace. 

His body is limp as he gets strapped onto a stretcher. They may be talking to him, he thinks.

“He must’ve had a guardian angel,” someone next to him says. 

Frankie isn’t listening. He’s scanning the treeline, the landscape around him. It was all right here, the sheep, the meadow. 

It’s like you’re still right there, the phantom of your presence next to him, but he can’t see you anymore. Just like it was before, he could swear he hears you whisper.

thank you so much for reading <3 as always, comments and reblogs are love, i'm so excited to hear what you think!

[babyangelsky]

My Favorite Shows of 2024 💖✨

Welcome to Babyangelsky's 2024 Wrap Up! To commemorate my second year of watching QL dramas, and my first year of actually talking on my blog, I've compiled a series of lists to celebrate all the QL things I loved this year!

Please feel free to take my categories and make lists of your own and tag me in them if you do!

💜 All the lists can be found here! 💜

We've arrived at my final list! If you've read all of my lists, some of them, or only this one, thank you! I've really enjoyed looking back and talking about everything I loved this year.

May we receive even more QL blessings in 2025 💖

♡ Love Sea

There are many shows that I loved this year and many favorites among them, but this one is my very favorite. This is my show. I could not begin to tell you how excited I was when we learned that we'd be getting a new FortPeat project and that we were going to get to see them act together again. I love them both so much that I was always going to love this show because of them regardless of what it ended up being.

But what it ended up being was a really damn good show. I don't care what anyone says. It was so much more than just amazing chemistry and love scenes. I was writing about this show weekly. It had me talking about the acting and styling, keeping track of colors, doing scene breakdowns and character analysis, coming up with clown theories, the whole nine.

Love Sea is that girl. For me.

♡ I Saw You in My Dream

This show gave us the softest, sweetest love, mutual horniness, joyous sex, casual affection, supportive parents, and then without even trying, it also healed everyone's religious trauma in the kindest and gentlest way possible. It was wonderful and refreshing and healing to see queer characters have a warm, loving relationship with their faith and have it be something that gave them comfort and that they could share.

Seeing Ai just casually sitting in a cathedral to find some peace meant so much to me. I'm so happy and grateful that this show exists.

♡ Unknown

I want this show injected directly into my veins because, babes, everything about it is like heroin to me. It's not just a favorite of the year, it's a favorite of all time. It's quiet in this intense way that I really enjoy, which is a quality shared by a few other entries on this list. I love when a show can make me feel everything and god, did this make me feel everything.

I've already talked about how phenomenal the acting is in my favorite performances list but it's impossible to praise this show without also talking about the lighting and cinematography and colors and chemistry because it's all beautiful. It's a goddamn masterpiece.

♡ Knock Knock Boys

I genuinely love when a show takes me by surprise. I hadn't even fully decided whether I was going to watch it or not before it aired and I don't quite remember what convinced me to give it a chance, but I'm so glad that I did.

You look at it and think all you're gonna get from it is a fun silly time. And you do get a fun silly time! Then you go a little deeper and you realize what you actually have is a series about learning to communicate within relationships and outside of them, making peace with yourself, navigating love and sex, and figuring out what you really want in life, all tied up in this giant sparkly sex positive bow. It's an absolute gem.

♡ We Are

We Are is the epitome of what I like to call a cotton candy show: it's sweet, fluffy, and fun. There aren't really any stakes, there's not a whole lot going on. It's just a little treat there to give you a good time.

And boy howdy did it air when I needed it most. I had a very, very rough summer and every episode of this show felt like I was getting a hug. It was so cozy and comforting. It was a love letter to friendship and it has my entire heart.

♡ Our Youth

At the time of writing this series still has three episodes left before it ends and even though a lot can go wrong in three episodes, I'm still confident in saying that this is one of my favorite shows of the year. In fact, this may be my favorite Japanese BL. Full stop.

There is just something so...entrancing about it. That quiet intensity I mentioned earlier. I love how it uses silence and light, I love that every piece of dialogue feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, I especially love what Kamimura Kenshin has done and continues to with his portrayal of Haruki. I just love everything about this drama. Everything.

♡ Two Worlds

I was so damn excited for this show from the moment I first saw the pilot. It was one of my most anticipated dramas of the year and not only is it my favorite MaxNat project to date, it was my first time ever writing about colors!

The killer chemistry and truly beautiful love scenes were all but a given and the fantasy element was a trip, but writing about the colors was what really made this for me. The sleeper color demon in my brain (which sneaks in when you attend @respectthepetty Colors College) had me looking at the stitching on clothing and the exact shades used in any given plaid pattern to try and make sense of the random and ever-changing use of colors in this show and I had the time of my life doing it.

♡ Love for Love's Sake

We had this show for a grand total of TWO WEEKS. Isn't that insane?Just two weeks and it gave us these beautiful characters who tore us all open in the best way and left us gasping for air and infinitely glad that this show was made and that we got to watch it. That was my experience, at least.

To me this is a show about learning to heal and to love yourself through loving somebody else. There are as many interpretations of it as there are people who watched it--as it should be--and mine ultimately comes down to this: Myung Ha's best friend loved him so much and wanted so dearly for him to be happy that he created a reality where Myung Ha got the love and sense of belonging that he always deserved, and it was beautiful.

♡ Wandee Goodday

What's even better than being blessed with the gift that is bunny boy Great Sapol? Sex positivity! Condoms! Advocating for sexual health! The bunny boy being the greenest flag in all the land! Ace rep! Ace rep with a happy ending! BL Mother of the Year Cher! The first GMMTV wedding since same sex marriage was legalized in Thailand! Horny gym massages! Therapy! Title Kirati finally being a good boy in a BL!

And on and on and on! In my heart and in my soul, I'm a good time girl and this show was SUCH a good time. It was a delightful little treat from beginning to end.

♡ The Loyal Pin

You know a show is special when just hearing the intro music makes you feel happy and comforted and giddy with anticipation. This is a beautiful show. It feels like the dessert table at a fancy, expensive wedding.

Everything is well done. Everything. The acting and the story are incredible, the cinematography is stunning, the styling is gorgeous, the OST fucks. It's just so damn good from top to bottom that it's become my favorite GL ever. I love it dearly.

♡ My Stand-In

Characters like Ming who are the human embodiment of lead paint and the stories they feature in aren't for everyone, but they sure are for me. Especially when those stories are led by great actors like Up and Poom who can have me in my feelings with the tiniest shift in their expressions.

They had me so in my feelings, in fact, that I arranged my watch schedule so I would always have a fluffy show to decompress with after every episode. It was that intense and if I loved it as much as I did, it was became Up and Poom were that good. I love a sweet love story but I also love a story about people who are DEEPLY deranged about each other.

♡ The On1y One

Even though I did not watch the finale of this show and will not watch it until such time as a second season has been announced, filmed, and is ready to premiere, it was still one of my favorites of the year. I just can't be mad at it.

It had everything that I love. Quiet intensity and great acting and dialogue and EXPRESSIONS and Benjamin Tsang's face and yearning and tiny little moments that live in my mind rent-free. I just wish it was complete because I love these characters so much and want to see them happy.

♡ Century of Love

I was raised on telenovelas. I've been watching them my whole life. So of course I'm always going to have a soft spot for BLs that scratch that lakorn/telenovela itch in my brain and that's exactly what this show did!

It gave us soulmates! Reincarnation! The red string of fate! Magic rocks! Wet dreams after a 124 year dry spell! Questionable CGI! Goddess-approved yaoi! And holding all of it together was Daou and Offroad's phenomenal chemistry. I fucking love this show!

♡ 4 Minutes

There are few things I love more in this BL watching life than letting Dr. Sammon take me on a wild ride, and boy was this a WILD FUCKING RIDE. I didn't come up with a single theory or do anything but cheer Tonkla on the entire time it was airing, I just experienced it.

Every episode was a feast for the eyes, whether it was the acting or the cinematography or the music or, as was usually the case, a stunning combination of all those things. We had to wait so long for this one and even though I wish it was longer, it was entirely worth the wait.

♡ See Your Love

Another one that has yet to finish airing but that's so lovely in every way that it has already found itself among the ranks of my favorite Taiwanese BLs ever. No surprise considering the team that made it also made another one of my faves.

And it really is lovely, unhinged assassination attempts and all. The love between the mains is a phenomenal combination of healing and horny and the story gives its characters--especially its deaf protagonist--so much humanity and treats them with care and respect. Not to mention that it features some of the best BL parents I've ever seen.

♡ High School Frenemy

When I tell you I was so prepared for this to be a series that I ended up dropping after a few weeks. The only reason I even watched it initially was for Mark Pakin and then something happened and I ended up liveblogging all sixteen episodes and loving it so incandescently that it became one of my favorite shows of the year.

And it was alllll because of Sky and Nani and that phenomenal chemistry that came out of nowhere and hit me--and all of us--with a steel chair. Watching Saint and Shin say the most UNHINGED ROMANTIC SHIT TO EACH OTHER was truly one of the highlights of my year. The character writing was great, the acting was great, the friendships were top tier. Truly the biggest surprise of 2024.

If the "more than friends less than lovers" shirt was a show, it would be this show.

♡ Sugar Dog Life

What a darling little treat of a show. It's so cozy and comfy and sweet. I'm always going to be a sucker for "food as a love language" shows and I enjoyed watching these two fall in love over meals so much.

As an aside, I spent almost the entire time slightly tormented because I couldn't figure out who Tanaka Koki reminded me of but I'm very happy to say that I figured it out: Sea Dechchart.

♡ Jack and Joker

For me, it's impossible not to love something that was so clearly made with all the passion, joy, and love in the world and that is exactly the energy that Yin and War brought to this project and I adored it.

This show made me feel the entire spectrum of human emotion every single week. I was never not excited for the next episode, even when it made me sad. It was fun and chaotic and beautiful to look at and I'm so happy that it exists.

♡ First Note of Love

This series is just...so gentle. Even though loss is a central theme in the story, it's never portrayed in a looming, haunting way. Matt's presence is always felt but in a way that's very human and beautiful.

At its core, this story is about all the ways love and grief are intertwined and giving yourself a second chance and letting love back in and allowing yourself to feel and I love it so dearly. So dearly.

♡ Dead Friend Forever

This is the show that finally got me to talk on my blog. I had such a great time being a clown and coming up with theories and reading other people's theories and spending entirely too much time looking at the minute details of that creepy damn mask.

It was a wild ride from start to finish and I enjoyed every minute of it. And it gave me TaBarcode, which was a gift I will cherish always even if thinking about them makes me want to listen to Rollin' in the Deep by Adele.

[jinwoosbabyboo]

Xavier Where Did You Go?

What if Starfall forest won? What if the stars were rewritten only to have a few constellations missing? A/N: Did some editing and this really didn’t end up being that sad in my opinion but I hope you enjoy ☺️

Starfall Forest. You hate this place with a burning passion, but you keep coming here year after year without fail almost like you have to or else you might forget. The trees are still standing tall with their leaves rustling in the slight breeze. Spring is here and the forest is more alive than ever; you wish I could say the same. Time has been unkind to you yet this damned forest that took everything from you flourishes with unbending beauty. How can something so beautiful torment you with such ugly memories?

I hate you.

You take deep breaths and squeeze your fist tightly trying to will any tears to fall. Maybe if just a few of them fall again this emptiness in the pit of your stomach won’t feel so heavy. As always…..nothing. You've wrung yourself dry; You haven’t cried in a little over a year yet the scar attached to the memory of him leisurely eats away at your soul endlessly. You can’t handle the concerned looks and talks of professional help anymore. You haven’t lost your mind you're grieving and no one understands; how could they? This is the only place that makes you feel like you're any closer to him. You make it to the clearing that looks exactly as it did last year. And the year before.....

And the year before.....

The trees unbending the grass as green and plush as ever and the water dancing mischievously almost like it’s laughing at you. You kneel down to watch the water closely and the second you catch your reflection in the water a single tear falls. Cascading down your cheek and disappearing into the water reminding you how insignificant all of this is. You take your usual seat at the waters edge and pull your legs up to hug your knees. The silence is nice – well it was nice “I told you not to follow me”

You hear her breath audibly hitch behind you “I’m really worried about you”

You stared ahead not really looking at anything just letting your thoughts and the sound of the forest consume you. The last thing you needed were Tara’s watery doe eyes staring back at you with that same damn look everyone gives you. “So you’ve said many times” You sighed “I don’t need another lecture about getting help and I don’t want to be told that I'll be okay” You fiddled with the grass at your side not taking your eyes off the endless trees ahead. “I’m trying to forget him if that’s what you wanted to hear”

Tara laid down her jacket and took a seat next to you. You could see her concerned face in your peripheral “I want my best friend back” There’s a quiver in her voice that breaks your heart. You want to go back to normal, but you can’t. You remember everything even the memories that belong to someone else. You're cursed to wander now with past memories of a future that doesn’t exist.

“Tell me what happened” You gasp snapping my head in her direction. She gave you a sad smile and nodded “I’m all ears”

You know she won’t believe a word you say, but she’s the first person in four long years offering to listen. “I lost him right here” You drop your gaze and smooth my hand over the grass. “Right where you’re sitting actually”

4 Years Earlier…

“Xavier snap out of it! Look at me” You grab his face shaking it. His eyes are vacant as he stares at you – he looks like a shell of himself. “Xavier!” finally he blinks rapidly registering that you're standing in front of him. “You…” He’s dead weight in your arms as he falls to his knees dragging you down with him. “You…..need to leave” His breath is ragged and you can feel him slipping away. “I’m not leaving you! Tell me what to do I can help”

“Starfall….Forest will stop…..when it has enough power” Is that all it needs? He should have said something sooner you can use the aether core. “The aether core should be more than enough” You press your hand to his chest and pull him close.

Look at the clock and slowly let my eyes wander to him….

“You had a hooligan in your eye…..” What?

“They think we’re rivals….”

“Grandis Knight….”

“I’ve come back….”

“My star has left me….”

“You always lie….”

Fractured memories are flooding your brain as you resonate with Xavier in this moment. These aren’t your memories, but everything feels like deja vu. Your body is going numb as your muscles seem to lock into place with all of these memories just as you feel like you might pass out there’s a sharp pain in your chest. Your evols disperse and nothing, but soft wind caresses your face. A horrible cough rips through your throat and a copper tasting liquid seeps out from between your lips. Your body is heavy and it takes you a minute to realize you're no longer kneeling in front of Xavier; you're laying flat on your stomach while Xavier lies next to you. His breath is ragged as his evol continues to be drained by the forest. It wasn’t enough and telling by the pain radiating through your chest you've cracked the core in your heart.

You struggle to reach out and grab Xavier’s hand that’s also reaching for yours. He lazily intertwines his fingers with yours and you could see the love and pain in his eyes as the color drained from them. “I couldn’t protect you last time and I couldn’t …. protect you here …. either” He draws in a long breath and exhales on a dry cough. You're crying uncontrollably now because you remember everything.

“You left me Xavier” His eyes widen at your words. “You left me on Philos to come here” You draw in a ragged breath. “Why….” I can feel the warm embrace of deaths comforting hands slowly wrapping around me.

“You’re not a sacrifice I….” His eyelids drooped and closed for half a second too long before he opened them again “I needed to save ….. you” His eyes closed once more and you can feel his hand going cold. Your head is swimming with all this new information and it’s only making your death more agonizing with the pain of your brain trying to break free from your skull.

“You deserve….better Xav….in another life.…maybe….” You don’t have the strength to finish your sentence – just breathing was hard enough. Your heart is failing so you close your eyes – just for a moment – trying to find some kind of comfort. Nothing hurts anymore you must be on the brink by now. You're unable to open your eyes now just floating in a painless but simultaneously suffocating death. You died holding Xavier’s hand in his last moments the same way he held yours on Philos. Maybe you can love Xavier correctly in the next life.

In another life Xavier maybe you won’t have to sacrifice yourself for me. Maybe you won’t be alone.

Endless dark skies and stars float ahead of you just out of reach. This must be the end – you're crossing over. Suddenly you're being shaken awake you open your eyes to see Tara and Jenna kneeling in your face. They look like they’ve just seen a ghost; wide eyes and they’re yelling something. Everything sounds like it's underwater so it's hard to make out what they're saying.

“Over here!”

“We’ve got her!”

“Paramedics we need paramedics!”

“Hurry! She’s going cold”

You're still laying on you stomach with blood pouring from your mouth. Your eyelids are heavy and their words are still muffled as they try to comfort you. “It’s okay help is coming” You feel the weight of someones hands on your body moving you onto a stretcher.

“Xa…Xav….” They need to help Xavier too why are they only focused on me? He needs help save him not me please. “You’re going to be fine” Jenna says as the paramedics strap you down onto the stretcher to keep you stable.

No Xavier is dying help him!

You manage the tilt your head just enough so you can see him, but there’s no one there. Not even a sign that anyone was next to you.

Where did he go? Did they already get to him? I hope so….

“Did y-……” It’s no use all you can do is let your tears flow as you stare at the ceiling of the ambulance hoping he’s safe and being taken care. You're told to try not to talk; you can’t talk no matter how hard you try anyway. An oxygen mask is forced on your face and soon you go under again letting your brain shut down to heal itself.

You spent two months in the hospital and not a single visit from Xavier. He must be mad at you for telling him that he deserves better. That will all be fixed today though because you're finally cleared to go home. Lisa, Simone and Tara are all there to pick you up – you lightly jog over to them pulling them into a group hug. You pile into the car and head towards your place.

“You guys can go right in I have to go see someone real quick” You unlock your front door for them and head towards the elevator. You ignore all the hoots and whistles from them and flip them off while the doors close. You all, but run to get to Xaviers door you need to see him now; you need to make it up to him or you won’t be able to rest. You type the code in and the door beeps at you indicating the wrong code. “Did he change it?” You opt to knock on the door and your heart is pounding as you stand there waiting impatiently to see his handsome face.

The door slowly opens and you see an elderly lady looking up at you. Your brows furrow in confusion and you lean back to check the apartment number just to make sure you didn’t knock on the wrong door. No this is his apartment so who is this old lady? “Hi uhm I was looking for Xavier?” The old lady eyes you skeptically before sighing loudly. “Look kiddo whoever you’re looking for doesn’t live here I've lived here for forty years and I've never had anyone named Xavier come through here”

“I’m sorry?” Your heart just about dropped to your toes. What is she talking about?

“Have a nice day young lady I hope you find who you’re looking for” You could barely register her words before the door clicked shut in your face. Forty years? How could she have lived there for forty years? You wander back to your apartment in what feels like a daze. As soon as you get through the door your friends rush to you with concern on their faces.

“Are you ok?”

“What happened?”

“Come sit down”

“Does Xavier still work at the Hunter’s Association?” All three of them immediately freeze and glance at each other in confusion. Lisa takes a seat next to you and she’s looking at you like she doesn’t know what you're talking about. “Who?” You draw back in shock – your mouth opens and closes trying to find words for what's even happening. “Xavier you know six one light blonde hair always sleepy” Your eyes dart to each one of their faces and you can tell by the way Simone fidgets with her fingers and the way Tara avoids your eyes all together; they think you're spouting nonsense. “Why are you guys acting like this?”

“Us?” Simone jumps in “Babes we have no clue who you’re talking about” She tilts her head searching your eyes. For what? You have no clue. “Are you feeling okay you did overdue it on our last mission”

You spring up from the couch on the verge of a breakdown because you feel like you're losing your mind. “What mission? I was in the forest with Xavier we got pulled into a protofield and then…..then I was…..he” You're crying uncontrollably at this point — shaking violently at the memories that taunt your psyche.

“It was just you in that protofield” Lisa says softly; she’s standing next to you now rubbing your back. “There wasn’t anyone else there” You can’t handle this right now. You quickly escort your friends out of your apartment saying that you need some rest. You slam the door reveling in the silence as you try to calm your nerves while your heart is pounding in your chest.

For weeks you tried asking everyone who knew Xavier where he was, but everyone looked at you with the same concerned and confused look. They think you're going crazy, you're not, he was real you know he was your memories of him are so vivid.

Xavier where did you go?

Present day….

Tara sat quietly as you recounted everything that’s led you to this life of solitude now. “Reality didn’t truly set in until I saw the abandoned building where Jeremiahs flower shop was” A laugh slipped from your lips, but there was no amusement. “I know you think I'm crazy and I'm fine with that” You turn to see Tara digging in her bag for something — she turns back to you and holds out a tablet with a news story titled ‘CELESTIAL BODY PLANET FOUND THROUGH DEEPSPACE TUNNEL ; KING OF PHILOS MAKES CONTACT’

“Why are you sh—” My breath hitches in my throat when I see it. The icy blonde haired boy off to the left. His eyes are hollow and distant as he stares straight ahead. No sign of emotion not even a hint of a smile.

It’s Xavier.

“You were always talking about this Philos place and I saw this” Tara wrapped an arm around you squeezing you in a quick side hug. “Im guessing this is your mystery man?” You stare at the picture for what feels like an eternity. Your vision blurs as a wave of relief washes through you. You knew you weren’t crazy he is real and not just a figment of your imagination. Your tears splash onto the screen and you're hiccuping from the overwhelming emotions pouring out of you. Thats when it hits you that you’ve switched places…..

Xavier forgot me….

The consequences of him forgetting you made it so that your future with him never happened. Which means he never backtracked to try and save you. You scramble to your feet just needing to sort out your thoughts by moving. “I have to get to Philos” Your words rush out of you sounding more like gibberish rather than English.

“That planet is dying we’ve been instructed to steer clear of it” Tara brought up a memo on the tablet explaining all the dangers of the tunnel and which planets we’re not allowed to go to. He’s just within your reach, but he's already slipping from your grasp.

Is this what he felt for all those years? You shake your head unable to accept this “I’m going I have to” You turned on your heels – storming off – determined to start planning this excursion to Philos.

Xavier I'm coming for you just wait for me a little longer.

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

Heyyy!!! Hope this ask finds you well! I’m looking for all the Alpha Stiles fics! Long and smutty, if they exist! Please and thank you so much!!

Sure.

Wild Heart by giidas (KatushkaK)

(1/1 I 2,301 I Mature)

“And no, I did not get us a room,” Derek adds, just to be sure.“Let me get us one, then. Any preferences?”Derek lifts his eyebrows and gives Stiles his best are-you-being-serious-right-now look.Stiles honest to god laughs out loud, startling Derek by clapping him on the shoulder and saying: “Oh, I like you already, so much sass!” and then goes off to procure a key to a room.

My Alpha, My Pack, My Family. by Ladyofthe_Alpha

(7/? I 12,303 I Explicit)

Derek finds himself is a position where every Alpha wants him. Will this mysterious powerful Alpha help him find his place in his pack? Or will he be another Alpha looking to get an in with the powerful Hale Pack?

You're All I've Ever Needed by siriuslyuptonogood

(6/? I 14,047 I Explicit)

Stiles Stilinski has never needed Derek Hale, but Derek Hale has always needed Stiles Stilinksi.

"I don't need you, Derek" sent Derek away from Beacon Hills, back to New York, and he would like to think he's never looked back. He hasn't gone back, at least. Maybe he never will. He's happy in the city, has tons of hot, kinky sex with hotter-than-the-sun alphas, is completely satisfied. He doesn't need a pack. When one alpha breaks it off, there's another to replace him. It's New York. There are 8.5 million people. He's not worried. He's not lonely. No, not him.

Except, he's thirty-three, and it's been seven years since he left Beacon Hills, seven years since he's had someone in his life longer than three or four months at a time. He isn't sure what he needs anymore, but he has a feeling it definitely isn't this.

When the Tables are Turned by BeniMaiko

(5/5 I 16,690 I Explicit)

Derek has to deal with a newly bitten Stiles.

You Gotta Roll with the Punches by quicksylver28

(12/12 I 34,787 I Teen)

Stiles Always thought that he was pretty well adjusted for a kid.When his best friend Scott had an asthma attack when he was six, Stiles said 'ok' and held his hand through it. When his mother dies when he was nine, and his Father's soul mark crumbled off his skin like ash, he said 'ok' and picked up the broken pieces of their lives. When his soul mark blossomed on the skin just above his heart and he realizes that his true loves first words would be "FUCK OFF", he said 'ok' and braced himself for having his heart kicked in the ass.

We're The Wild Ones, Raised By Wolves. by halelujah

(12/? I 54,290 I Mature)

"Your uncle not only killed people, he bit Scott unlawfully and without his consent, he also put a big, red target on our backs." Stiles continues calmly, folding her arms across her chest. She can't help but glare. "An action that I'm now going to reap the repercussions for."

"He wasn't yours to kill!" Derek rumbles, icy blue flashing in his eyes. "He murdered Laura!"

She sees the decision in Derek's eyes before it even turns in his mind that he should attack. As she watches Derek's muscles twitch and tense, she lets out a sharp bark, one that tells Scott to stay out of it, before she meets Derek head on, eyes burning crimson.

[Or the fic where Stiles has always been a werewolf, an Alpha and female.]

Who Are You Really? by mercury_caduceus

(11/11 i 63,021 I Mature)

After hiding his werewolf and Alpha status since his mother died, Stiles runs into Derek and they work together to find the Alpha killing people in Beacon Hills. [Set in Season 1. Alpha!Stiles, Beta!Derek.] I will be continuing this slowly.

White Rabbit by BlueEyedBetaMeow

(13/? I 84,272 I Teen)

When Stiles begins to piece together that his friends are avoiding him, and why, he begins to wonder why they ever saved him from the Nogitsune to begin with. When a terrible turn of events takes place in the Preserve, and the only thing that can save him is the bite, will the pack forget the misgivings between them, or will he be left to suffer?

Underneath by groffiction

(43/? I 190,576 I Explicit)

AU, where Stiles gets bitten by a Cyger – a type of rare Weretiger around the same time Scott gets bitten by Peter. Confused and more than a bit freaked out, they both are naturally suspicious when Derek shows up out of the blue. Still, there is something about the moody, aloof werewolf that both intrigues and draws Stiles to Derek like a moth to a flame. But, everyone knows that if you get close enough to touch flames, you get burned. However, with the promise of love, is that burning sacrifice worth it? And how does a Weretiger and a Werewolf even work as mates? Very loose canon through season 1 and season 2 of Teen Wolf. Might have some things from Season 3, depending on where the story leads.

[qin-qin16]

Chromatic Crew and Murder Time Trio Poly existing at the same time, BUT with two Killers.

The first, one of the few to survive for so long in the tar-like claws of Nightmare, was also the first to meet Murder and Horror. The relationship between them was troubled, something… mediocre – too superficial to be friends, but too deep to be just “work colleagues”. In a way, they managed to understand each other, together in some way in that deep, dark hole that was being under the rule of the Lord of Negativity.

But this Killer had met Color – they had already made promises to escape together even before Murder and Horror came into the picture. They can manage without me, Killer thought while watching Murder pretend to sleep on one of the countless nights they shared. I’ve taught them everything they needed to know, he pondered when he saw Horror hold back the bitter words he wanted to say against Nightmare, knowing that it would only end with his bones being broken.

It’s not like they would notice my absence, I can be selfish for once, was his last thought about them, before finally fleeing far from his past, to start over alongside Color (and later, the other members of the Chromatic Crew). And of course, being safe in the Omega Timeline, Nightmare couldn’t just enter there and reclaim his subordinate/slave. In fact, after thinking for a long time while venting his anger on the other residents of the abandoned castle where they lived, Nightmare realized it was only a matter of time before that Killer escaped from his grasp.

It was obvious, that thing had already met its most faithful liberator; all Nightmare had to do was get a new one and prevent this one from having the same hope as the former. It wasn’t hard to capture another stray Killer, suffering after so many resets – hungry for a moment of silence and painlessness.

Nightmare didn’t even try to hide that this Killer was a different one – it wasn’t hard for Horror and Murder to figure that out either. In a way, it was easier for this Killer (whom I will name Kei to avoid confusion) to adapt, having two other skeletons to guide him, just as the other had done with them. Kei was more curious, less cautious with his actions, almost like an animal playing with the traps set for him.

Horror and Murder, having spent more time together, had no trouble including Kei in their activities – in missions, in the few dinners they shared, in the sleepless nights when one of them remained alert, awake for any imagined intruder. The three were like wild dogs: needing sacrifices to place their trust, whether time, attention, or a vital part of their body – gnawing on each other’s bones as a way to show that they trusted one another.

It would be interesting if, after some time, the three of them planned to escape from Nightmare as well – there was nothing there holding them except themselves. Of course, they didn’t have an Omega Timeline to escape to, and no allies who would help them if they could finally hide. But perhaps living on the run was better than remaining in the clutches of that true devil.

Uhhh idk who would like to see this but i want to tag more of my mutuals so, @spuirrelwiththeletterp @t3m1 @suorgummiis (since you three seemed interested) @what-have-i-unleashed (because i used your mermaid bunny au for this) @triglycercule (no this is not my mtt poly chart) @howlsofbloodhounds (because well… Killers here)

yes i need to justify the tags

[pparacxosm]

a little while before this came out i remember diya explaining the concept to me and saying she was doing something heady and charged and tashi-centric with the what am i jesus motif and i was like don’t threaten me with a good time diya and we were talking about how art donaldson fundamentally destroyed the city boys agenda and what have you and anyway

what i like about fics that centre around this particular moment in the film of tashi’s injury is that they always act as this caustic tunnel right into the hearts of we few but passionate devotees of dear ms duncan and anyyyy opportunity to see diya through what she creates is a gift to my bones

and what i can tell about diya—what i am lucky enough to know about diya, but what really shines through here—is her absolutely faultlessly earnest eye for that little thing, that true and tender thing that exists in the details like tashi duncan’s hands and the abject intimacy of speaking to one another while doing yoga, and all these other bodily things, these corporeal things, that when told alongside a grand epic, the inextricable dissonance of her charisma and physicality and vitality and uniqueness and hurt (!!) and how it all makes her everything and nothing like a divine being it’s just !!!! ugh !!!,!!!!?;)/!!

and she does it in a way that’s so easy and introspective that you’re like well of course !! what ABOUT the after !!!??! i was thinking the same thing !!

but then only diya is watching a lecture on asian religion from a frat-boy traumatised lecturer and thinking waitttt what of unexpressed worship and cats and angels? what about THAT? what about the afterrrrrr???

the absolute tashi duncan of this

the way everything snaps back to her like elastic !! it’s addictive !!!!

it reads like learning in real time

this is migrain inducingly good

and this:

absolute consensus statement from an entirely separate set of religious canon than the central one because all devotion is the same thing and there is always the god or the girl or the god AND the girl and omg

what about the after indeed..

i need to go to bed.

goddess

"what am i, jesus?" "yeah"

(tashi duncan x f!reader)

The essay is crumpled by the time you reach Tashi. 

The infirmary is a small building; plain and tucked away between some trees at the far end of campus. Simultaneously inconspicuous and irrelevant. At best an after-thought, only identifiable from the words “health center” plastered across the front. 

It’s surprising you didn’t miss it, and you can’t help but feel indignant at the fact that this is where they brought her. But the feeling is quickly washed away with the growing sense of dread that gnaws at your chest. 

Abruptly, you’re hit with the idea that you’d walk in to not find her at all. That there would be no sign of her existence within those four walls. It’s illogical and unfounded, but the thought lingers as you force yourself to the door.

You have a faint memory of meeting Tashi. A blurry recollection of bumping into her at the dining hall and a vague outline of the conversation that followed. The only thing you actually remember are noticing her hands.

It wasn’t anything physical about them that drew your attention. You couldn’t care less about how they actually looked, you were captivated by her movement. Instinctive yet deliberate. As if every action was simultaneously spontaneous and methodical. A dichotomy that gave each motion an innate intensity. A power hidden in the folds of the universe, which only she could reach. 

You didn’t have to watch Tashi play to know she’s special, you just had to watch her hands. 

You knew that from that first moment alone. 

The rubber soles of your sneakers squeak against the tiles as you walk into the room, your breath coming out in short little pants from the run. Your hands flex against the papers in your hands, as a breath of relief slips out upon seeing her. 

Tashi sits on the cot, eyebrows knitted pensively with a frown staring at the brick wall in front of her. Her arms are crossed against her chest, heaving in a melancholic rhythm. For a moment you expect her to scream on the top of her lungs or burst out crying, but she remains stoic.

Her knee is wrapped in what looks to be yards of gauze that is blinding under the overhead fluorescent lights. It beckons your attention with its unsettling glow and you drift to it’s call, your vision flooded with white. 

In the periphery of your view you see a tan movement, followed by the noise of a soft shuffle. Your eyes instantly dart back up to Tashi to see that she is already looking at you, her eyes slightly red and swollen.

Your heart drops. 

You want to carve your knee from its socket with your bare hands and leave it beside her. Give it to her as a replacement. If you could, you’d do it. Maybe give her your whole leg if that is what she wanted. It’s not even a question.   

You told Tashi you’d be late earlier in the week, during one of your yoga sessions. An important part of her routine she roped you into. And while you had no real interest in yoga, you also had no interest in ever denying her. Struggling through asanas was unimportant.

“He said he wanted me to stay a bit after class to talk about my paper,” you explained, voice somewhat strained from holding your breath and hands slightly trembling from trying to keep yourself in downward dog. 

She came down onto the mat beside you, releasing the position into a sitting one. Her hands moved to your waist, gently coaxing you into the proper formation and you exhaled instantly at the contact. “He didn’t say about what?” she questioned absently, preoccupied with your pose.

Your professor had a tendency to be vague via email, one of those people who never truly started trusting the internet. As a result his emails were brief and unintentionally ominous. This one simply read: 

Hello,  Please stay after next class to talk about your mid-semester paper.  Sincerely,  Professor Thatcher

“Just that he wanted to talk about my paper” you responded as her hands moved away from your body, a sense of loss pooling in your stomach. “I’ll just be a bit late to your game,” you frowned, coming down onto your own mat to sit beside her. 

Tashi shrugged, as she moved her foot to rest on the opposite thigh. “You’ll come after?” she said, adjusting her other leg in the same way, settling into the lotus pose. 

“Of course,” you responded without thought, and caught her eyes flick up to yours with a half smirk on her lips before falling back to your lap. Her hands reach towards you and she begins to move your legs as well.

“What class is it again?” she asked, also contorting you into a lotus. A futile effort, although that doesn’t deter her. 

“Asian religions"

She hummed, getting you halfway into the pose. Her gaze pulled away from your lap back up to your face with the same half-smirk. “I swear you do more for this elective than any other class,” she remarks amused.

“Who realized religion is complex?” you sarcastically retorted, a smirk on your own lips now. She laughed in response and little wrinkles formed at the edge of her eyes, the sight turning your smirk into a soft smile. It dipped to a frown as soon as you remembered what the conversation was about in the first place.

You were flippant with routine. Always eager to skip a class and never the one to follow your parents to mass every weekend. But you were always consistent with her games. Routine was only mundane without her.

Tashi’s hand reached to push a lock of hair behind your ears. “It’s only one match,” she whispered looking into your mind. You took in a deep breath and met her gentle eyes, the disappointment morphing into a knot in your chest. The sense of dread lingered as she smiled softly. “How interesting can playing Pepperdine be anyway?” 

The dramatic irony isn’t lost on you, it’s just too tragic to acknowledge. 

You should have taken the knot in your chest as a premonition. 

Her hands tremble. A small, involuntary motion that makes you feel ill. 

You’re seated across from where Tashi is on the cot. You ache to be closer, but the only seat next to her is already occupied by Art. Somehow having wormed his way into a place he doesn’t deserve. 

Like always, his presence and proximity bother you, but there is also a small joy in the fact that it is only Art. Tashi had told you Patrick was visiting for the game, but at the moment was nowhere to be seen. You don’t ask about him either, not one to question small blessings.

Only the sound of breathing fills the poky space. Art is watching you, probably as vexed by your presence as you of his.

(Sometimes you wonder if all the Apostles quietly despised each other as well. You’d understand why.)

You don’t have to turn to already see the impassive expression on his face, so your eyes remain glued to Tashi’s hands. Watching the little erratic tremors as you bit back nausea. There is no fluidity to the uncontrolled movement. It’s just hollow. 

“What’d he say?” Tashi suddenly asks, breaking the unnerving silence. There is an inflection in her voice which is both bitter and pained, an aftertaste of the day’s events. There is nothing to indicate the tone is directed towards you, but you flinch anyway. 

“Huh?” you mumble, not having processed her words. 

“Your professor,” she starts with an exhale. “What’d he say about your paper?” 

Your eyes dart down to the wrinkled papers on your lap, thumb pressing down on one specific crinkle in the vain attempt to straighten it. It feels insignificant. The essay. The professor. Pointless to even think about, much less discuss. 

When you look back up, you see Tashi is looking at you with a desperate wide-eyed interest. She bites the inside of her cheek in unsettled anticipation and it dawns on you that she is trying to fill the room with something besides the obvious torment. Without much of a thought, you murmur “Something about nuance.” 

“Nuance?” she questions, a vain attempt to continue the conversation. 

You nod in response. The interaction is blurry, the moment charged with the desire to leave the game and the memory clouded with the panic of finding out about the injury once you did. But you remember him mentioning nuance. “He told me I needed to be more nuanced,” you repeat, with another small nod in her direction. 

“What was the paper on?” Art asks, also picking up on her need for a distraction. 

You swallow, pushing some hair back from your face, “the living goddesses of Nepal.” 

Kumari was the actual term. A connection between humanity and the divine was how Professor Thatcher described them. “An incarnation of the celestial for a few years,” he said in lecture, although you didn’t catch anything after that. Drifting off by then, your mind already thinking of someone else. 

You’re grateful that Art doesn’t probe on why you chose the topic. Although, you’re sure he would have understood.

You think anyone who knew Tashi would. 

You told her once. 

“You’re like god,” you whispered to her drunk in the living room of Kappa something, too drunk from whatever concoction made by the frat brothers for their Halloween party. You were dressed as a cat, fallen to the ground while dancing inebriated, and clinging onto the soft, white fabric of Tashi’s angel costume as she tried to help you stand. You looked up to her, blinded by the flashing lights of the room and her radiance, and whispered those three words like a prayer. 

She had no verbal response, just pulling you up with a small smile and soft laugh. Her hands moved from your arms to your cheeks, gently cupping your face and tilting it.

She pressed a kiss to your forehead. 

The infirmary has settled into another, heavier silence. There is no sound loud enough to fill the space. None of you try. 

Her hands still tremble. 

The paramedics arrive eventually, whisking Tashi off to a proper hospital for examination. You take the name of where she’s gone and walk to your dorm, using your essay as a stressball as you plan on how to visit her the next morning.

A wave of exhaustion hits you the minute you cross the threshold into the room, and you walk straight to the bed. The tiredness sinks into your bones when you sit down. The day's events smothering you at once as your fingers play with the corner of the page.

You look down at the shriveled papers in your hand and take your first proper look at it all night. Red pen scribbled all throughout, little notes on grammar and word choice, but at the heading in all caps is written WHAT ABOUT THE AFTER?

Oh right. That’s what he said.

“It’s an informative paper, just…” Professor Thatcher started when you went up to him after class. His voice trailed off as he debated the right word, finally deciding, “just a stale one.” 

“Stale?”

“You lack nuance,” he clarified, with a flick of his wrist, looking back down to the red marking on the paper.

Your eyes darted to the clock on the wall and then back to him. “I mean…how much nuance is there…” you said with a forced smile, a weak attempt at a joke to resolve the conversation and leave for the game.

If he noticed the attempt, he made no comment. “You don’t consider the after,” he remarks, looking back up to you. His eyes narrowed as you snuck another look at the clock. 

“The after?”

“Yes,” he reiterated. “The after.”

“What... after?” you asked, eyes flicking to the clock once again.

“Well you mention how they lose their status after puberty, but don’t actually talk about their life…sans godhood,” he explained, watching you carefully. Daring you to look back at the clock.

You weren’t present enough in the moment to process what he was saying, but felt the need to defend your work anyway. “Well..when you’re worshiped like that…i don’t think you can just let it go…it’s what everyone knows you for”

“Exactly.”

You waited for him to say more, but were only left with an awkward silence. Your eyes darted to the clock once more, and heard a scoff like noise from his direction. He pushed paper into your hands and with a hint of irritation said, “Just re-write it based on the feedback I wrote. Give it back to me next week.”

You left the next second without a second thought.

WHAT ABOUT THE AFTER?

The words are a taunt.

You put the paper down on the bedside table and let your exhaustion carry you to sleep.

The hospital is a bus-ride away from campus. You’re on it by the time the sun starts to rise, trying pointlessly to distract yourself with the sky’s pinkish hues. 

It’s a large hospital, but it doesn’t take much to find Tashi. You tell the lady at the front desk her name, and her face flashes with recognition. She points you in the direction to go and sends you off. 

Three minutes and an elevator ride later, you stand in front of her hospital room. You knock on the door out of courtesy, but quickly push yourself in, unable to handle the distance anymore. 

Tashi is laying on the hospital bed looking out the window. There are dark circles around her eyes and her lips a fine straight line. Her head shifts to acknowledge your presence, before she turns back to the window. 

You don’t move a muscle. 

Your mind goes back to when she kissed your forehead at the Halloween party. She spun you after that, dancing to the music with her in your arms. You clung onto her to keep yourself upright. 

If it wasn’t for her, you would have fallen. 

“They took a couple x-rays” she begins, finally breaking the trepid silence of the room with a low, solemn voice. She looks away from the window in your direction, without properly looking at you. 

You inhale apprehensively, swallowing slowly before you speak. “Yeah?” The question you can't bring yourself to ask lingers in the air.

She turns back to the window, watching the sun finally reaching its rightful place in the sky. Her eyes go distant and you wait for the words you fear. 

“They said I might not play again,” she whispers, eyes still on the sun. Her finger imperceptibly pulls at the sheet on the bed. Your focus is on the subtle motion, watching the way she pinches it between her thumb and index. “I might never play again,” she repeats, her voice louder as if properly hearing herself for the first time. Her brows furrow as she confronts the possibility, trying to reconcile it with everything she’s known.   

Her hands move to push back her hair in a swift, intuitive motion.

“It doesn’t change anything.” 

She lets out a shaky, humorless laugh, before turning to face you. This time your eyes lock and she gives you a small, sad smile. 

She knows what you mean. 

You both know it’s true.

authors note: about a month ago in the midst of Navaratri a frat boy ran into my friend's "Religions of Asia" class and rolled down the lecture hall as if acting out the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme. the incident was so off-putting to the professor he decided to turn the entire class virtual from that point on. as a result, my friend now plays his lecture videos while we eat together each Wednesday and this idea was conceived during one of those lunches (so thank you frat guy ig?). this is more experimental than anything else i've written, so i am very curious to know what you all think. i hope you enjoyed it, or at least understood what I was trying to say lol

art credit: taken from the French poster for Satyajit Ray’s Devi

[thekirammanjinx]

Let's talk, this got long, addressing continued ignorance and misunderstanding of caitlyn and vi:

"Am I the only one who hates caitvi" no you're not, there's plenty of people with the same ignorant misunderstandings and virtue signaling ideologies. The same people who will spout false information and project their opinions onto the media vs taking the information the media is giving them and actively interpreting it.(that's not to say you can't be indifferent to caitvi. But all the hater are literally so dense and spout the same nonsense.)

"Who you have oppressed for decades" first of all CAITLYN didn't oppressor anyone. So saying she oppressed them is ignorant and a blatant lie. Caitlyn did not have any control or contributions.

Speaking on oppressors; silco and the chembarons have actively been oppressing and beating down their own people. Making zaun a thousand times more unlivable than when piltover did with vander. The firelights came to be because of silco and shimmer. Now, caitlyn did not gas an ENTIRE city. She targeted those afformented groups who have contributed to a downfall and hostile environment in zaun.

(lest we forget the council literally wanted a full scale assault on the entirety of zaun to aquire jinx. So even if caitlyn had done nothing zaun was doomed either way. War was looming if she did not act, you literally cannot talk about this without mentioning it, so the amount of people who choose to exclude this information to skew their "critical analysis")

Caitlyn didn't suddenly become empathetic because of vi. We see her being gentle with the jaw guy after he gets shot by jinx, she listens to vi before they even become more, yes she's apprehensive at the start but to say she changed because vi? Were you watching with your eyes closed and the TV on mute?

Saying that "these are her people" about vi. These are not her people. She actively hated silco and those aligned with him. Also she never was a freedom fighter for zaun. Idk where you got that. She just wanted a better life for HER and her FAMILY. Not to mention a tactical force to get chembarons off the streets isn't an act of oppression. That's a military action of snuffing out a drug cartel who are actively oppressing and harming the people of zaun.

(why are yall so in defense of the chembarons? Like yall truly don't give af about the people of zaun. We literally hear ekko say how bad the chembarons and shimmer have made zaun???)

"If the show didn't paint them good" you must be stupid if you thought the show was presenting it as good. The show is telling the story, it's giving a visual, just because it's there doesn't mean it's good. Or bad. Yes the show presents it as the BETTER option but it still shows how it is not 100% a morally good thing. But again you'd have to watch the show to see that wouldn't you??

(And again why are yall fighting for your lives trying to justify the chembarons existing and treating zaun like their own drug playing grounds.)

And to even say you like ambessa but not caitlyn & vi just feels embarrassing and you definitely missed the mark. People truly miss ambessa role in the entire season/series and it shows.

(i enjoy ambessa as a character but it's wild to see people try and tear down cait and or vi while praising ambessa in the same sentence. But this goes back to "we can handle evil characters but not good characters that do morally gray/bad things--which some of yall really need to have some introspection)

"Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons" there's literally a song IN THE SHOW with lyrics adjacent to this. No not verbatim, but it's basically right there. I'm convinced this person has not actually watched the show. There's no way. There is NO way.

"I'm not done with arcane" then idk, stfu and finish the damn show, if you feel the *narrative* is painting these actions as good that's a you problem. You do not know how to interpret the media in front of you. Because that's literally not what's happening.

Giving a character motives and reasons isn't justifying their actions or painting them as good. It's giving them a fleshed out story with emotions and said motives. Putting reason behind the actions. Not to mention this show is all about showing how people are complex, but you want to target caitlyn and vi for what?

Jinx targeted caitlyn literally because she was jealous and wanted vi to choose her over caitlyn. She wanted vi to shoot caitlyn. Caitlyn had personally done nothing to jinx. Jinx then killed 3 councilors, unprovoked.

So we can see how "targeting" a group of people for the actions of 1 is bad when it comes to caitlyn and vi, but we cannot say the same for jinx, or silco, or the likes??

(caitlyn strategically targeted chembarons and the shimmer cartel. Something ekko and the firelights were trying to do in s1. But everyone forgets that. Explaining and understanding what caitlyn did does not mean writing off her actions. But some of yall need to learn not to vilify her for doing what other characters wanted to do in the first place. She simply had the resources and means to do it. If a different character did it yall would not be so up in arms)

[pursuitseternal]

“A Night with the Ascendant:” Chapter 7

Lord Astarion x F!OC (Lumina) | M | 2k

🎨by @/WackyDaArt on X and Instagram

Summary: Another soirée, this time in honor of the Master’s new Bride. Tensions rise, old and new, past and present, and one choice made to do something about her past will not go unnoticed.

Cw: harem dynamics, sexual tension, angst and yearning

Previous ch | Ao3 link | Masterlist

Chapter 7…

Too loud… too bright… this soirée was just too… well, too.

Lumina watched it all from her perch, which just happened to be Astarion’s lap. Every movement she made earned her a groan or a breath of hot air in that sweet spot behind her ear. “For you,” he purred, nearly incessantly as his hands wandered her body, his longer nails digging into the silks and embroidery of her dress just to keep her alert.

And burning.

Even if her body responded to his touch, her mind was elsewhere. Her eyes followed the spawn around the room, watching their careful movements, the way they avoided looking at her… at him… except for furtive glances that teemed with resentment. And yet, even as she sat there, his velvet thigh under her, fingers raking her side, she festered… she knew the imbalance it was. That he wouldn’t take them to bed again, but kept them leashed at his will. That they would only be let to play when he deemed it so.

Unjust. Indentured.

Closing her eyes, she pictured her own indentured servitude, the memories so intense they made her head swim, flooding every sense, right down to the stink of her cotton mat where she was allowed to lay her head in the back room.

“Little love, why are you grinding your teeth?” He rumbled right into her ear. “Are you not enjoying being the center of attention?” his lips pressed shockingly damp kisses down the curve of her neck, his tongue slipping out to lick up the twin scars on the right side of her neck.

Lumina swallowed her moan, the instant feeling of a dozen red eyes on her stealing whatever pleasure his mouth had intended. Frigid, her body cooled, her mind screamed that it wasn’t fair. Not even a tenday ago, it would have been her in the crowd, too much skin showing for comfort just to attract a willing neck or cock to satisfy her hunger.

But all because she had his love… because she was the object of his obsession, his Bride, she sat comfortably against his cock, glass of wine in her fist. It felt wrong to preside over such a show of elegance when all she had come from was suffering, when all she had known was servitude.

And still the servitude lingered. Those spawn eyes glimmering with hate more and more as the revelry continued.

Not fair… not just… not… heroic. She stiffened in his lap and moved to stand. “My lord, my love, I need to stretch,” she poured out a million excuses, feeling the close scrutiny that always followed tonight.

“Where will you go, little love?” He purred, staying at her side even as she slipped down the stairs of his dais. Arms wrapped around her, and he gracefully, smoothly controlled her, maneuvering her towards the dance floor. “Surely there is no great comfort or pleasure than right here where you belong,” his voice dropped into this chest, “in my arms.”

Her body moved with his as one, melting against him, molded to his very ascended being. As if the blood in her veins yearned to return to its source. Closing her eyes, she let the feeling flood her. Gone was the melody of the bards and minstrels. There was only his heart beating hard enough for them both. And yet, every glance of glowing crimson eyes in the dark, in the crowd gave her pause.

She wasn’t a part of their existence. A spawn of a tenday before she was plucked and transformed into his Bride. Hesitantly, her eyes roamed up to his face…. And she wished to the gods she hadn’t.

Those crimson orbs seemed to draw in her very soul, the way they sparkled, bright red and black. His pupils grew fuller, more dilated the longer she stared into them. His long, silver hair fell over his shoulder, a hint of a mess, even in such perfect pretenses as a ball.

“What is it, my love?” he rasped, bringing his plush lips to her forehead, caressing it softly. “Do you need a moment for the two of us?”

Lumina nodded, and Astarion was more than willing to twirl her to the edge of the space and then guide her walking quickly to the terrace off the ballroom. As he walked into the crisp night, he recalled ordering this built in place of… his study and the elevator to the dungeons. He had seen that destroyed, a spacious veranda overlooking the gardens erected in its place.

He pulled her into the cool summer’s night, a gentle breeze off the Sea of Swords carrying a fresh scent to the heat of bodies in the ballroom. He looked at her face, the way the moonlight made her pale features even more pallid in the light. “My treasure, what troubles you?” he purred, watching as she didn’t turn her head, as her eyes just fixated into the distance beyond the walls of his palace. Her jaw clenched, her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and it didn’t take their sire bond for him to know her mind was elsewhere.

“My love, you know… I don’t care where you came from,” he rasped, pulling her back to his front. “Human or infernal, rich or servant… I only care that you are now mine, in my arms… in my bed…” He couldn’t help but feel his arousal, his heat pool in his groin with his possessiveness.

Lumina reaches a cool hand, running it gently up his cheek to weave her fingers in the unruly strands of his silver hair at the nape of his neck. “I know it, my Lord. And yet….” she trailed off, her small frame tense in his embrace.

“And yet?” he insisted, his hands gripping her hips harder, his nails digging into the fabric of her elegant gown to give her a grounding edge of pain.

Lumina stayed silent, trying her best to keep him from the darkest thoughts and memories she hid in her mind. She puts on a practiced smile and turns in his arms to face him. “Oh my Lord, I’m sorry for being so… foolish. If you find me worthy then…” she stands up on her tiptoes and cups his cheeks. “Then worthy I am…”

She holds her breath, diving up to kiss his plush lips. Satisfied with her ruse, she hears him growl in the back of his throat, fangs dragging her bottom lip. “Astarion…” she rasped into his fanged caress, lacing it with all her desire for him down their bond…. And she instantly felt the pulse of his in turn, stronger, more intensely. More obsessively.

“Lumina…”’ her name is barely audible in his husky tones, his hands on her hips turn her and shove her back against the Palace’s outer wall. Her body instantly succumbed, bending and melting to the firm heat of his frame that pushed against him.

“My bride, you temptress, threatening to undo me so close to your festivities? Tch, reckless and roguish, my love…”

“Hmmm, I only aim to please. In fact, what if we do something just you and I that is extremely un-lordly and un-lady-like? What if we meet in our chambers… just for a spell while everyone else mingles?” She flashed him her most alluring, most seductive smile.

He sighed through his nose, heavy lidded as he smirked down at her. “How could I say no?” he purred, releasing her slowly, dragging his warm hands off her body as slowly as possible. He leaned in, pressing his lips to her ear, sucking it, nipping it with his blunted teeth. “I’ll give you ten minutes of a head start. I expect you on your knees… beside my bed… patient and good.”

Lumina looked up at him, a coy smile on her cool lips. “Of course, my Lord,” she whispered her reply, grabbing her skirts and leaving through the balcony doors.

Only, she did not ascend to the bedrooms once she left the gathering.

She went down… down to the basement. Down to the vacant spawn dormitories. Down where she could rifle through her old things and grab a dagger and a cloak and breeches. Stopping by the chamberlain’s desk on her way out to the Lower City Wall, she grabbed a scroll of invisibility and a couple healing potions.

Casting the spell, she felt the sting of the magic making her unseen.

That’s when she heard footsteps… and a tail swishing along with the rustle of a dress.

Morana crept down the stairs, her dark blue nose sniffing as her red eyes landed on her location. “You have to either be an idiot or ungrateful if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, his sweet little Bride…”

Lumina cursed under her breath, definitely validating her location.

Those dark red eyes locked on her instantly, and she had to dodge and roll as her long dark tail jutted out as if to catch her… or trap her. But she just managed to evade her, the invisibility her advantage as Morana just trashed wildly.

“Running already? Barely given the gift you don’t deserve and you flee, ha!” Morana’s voice turned shrill, her fingers fleeing to show her long nails, her claws. “Why, I have half a mind to tell him of your little indescretion now… or perhaps I won’t… let him piece out your audacity himself…”

She sniggers, ��Either way, you pathetic girl, he’s going to be so… angry at you. I hope whatever you are sneaking off to do is worth the punishment you’ll get when he finds you… not if.”

With that, the door to the walls flung open with invisible hands, and Morana was left alone. Nothing but her heaving breaths and glowering frown for company. She swished her skirts behind her, returning back to the ballroom in an instant, heading for the Master.

She caught his attention, a practiced smile on her mouth as she gave him a deferential curtsy, her tail barely brushing the side of his leg as she did so. “My Lord, aren’t you missing your favorite little accessory?” she sneered slightly.

He stiffened. “Why does it concern you, Morana?” his brows knit as he whispered. “Have you not found your own pleasure this evening? Free choice of the guests? Necks and beds aplenty.” His gaze assessed her, curiously scrutinizing her with those red eyes. “Is what I offer now better? I don’t know why you’re complaining?”

For a brief moment, she looked at him, despair, hurt in her eyes. Then she shook it off. “Don’t fret about me, my Lord. Worry about your Bride. I saw her… she was most eager and in a hurry.” Her face was schooled back in that easy smile as her tail resumed its lazy swishing.

His thick silver brow arched, his eyes glittering in the light. “I’m most certain she is,” he purred, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles. “Please, Morana, find something to enjoy tonight,” he whispered before taking his leave through the crowd.

She looked at the way he pushed through the crowd, the way she could single out his boots in the din, the beating of his heart over the music. “Oh I already had found what I would enjoy most… never to enjoy again…” she barely whispered to herself before she picked up her skirts and pushed deeper into the ballroom.

The wine definitely had rushed to his head, the same way the vision of her naked body kneeling and ready for him made his desire pool in his groin. Fuck, if he wasn’t already hard as he climbed the palace stairs. And yet, as he pushed open the door to his chambers, his body cooled and his mind sobered to find it empty.

“Lumina?” he called. But only his own voice purred back at him as the night began to fall beyond the palace walls.

⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️

Thank you to @nyx-knox and @marimosalad for their cheerleading and betaing.

And to @scrapsovereign bc they got the fire back under me to finish this update. 😘